A central premise of King's nonviolence is that all human beings are related to each other by virtue of their location on the Earth and their shared status as humans in a system King believes was created by God. Although his belief in the interrelatedness of all humanity is based on Christianity, King uses the concept to legitimize his work in Alabama, to make the case for the Civil Rights Movement as a national movement, and to show that its tactics are appropriate responses to longstanding oppression.

King was a native of Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and was a minister in Montgomery, Alabama, when he came to prominence in the Civil Rights Movement. Over the course of the late 1950s and up until his death in 1968, he never confined his activism to his home community.

Instead, King took as his example the early Christians he cites in "Letter from Birmingham Jail," who took their message abroad. King's comments in this particular essay underscore a notion of American and African-American identity that is national instead of regional, especially when he proclaims, "I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.