
January 20, 2025
The metal prison bench that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat on in April 1963 while drafting his famous 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' is one of two major objects in an upcoming exhibit on the Declaration of Independence. The Museum of the American Revolution will display the piece throughout 2026.
The prison bench where Martin Luther King Jr. penned one of his best-known letters will be displayed at the Museum of the American Revolution later this year.
The metal seat from which the civil rights leader wrote "Letter from Birmingham Jail" will be included in the museum's upcoming exhibit on the Declaration of Independence, the museum said Monday. The oft-quoted missive called for direct action against unjust laws and expressed disappointment with "the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice." The piece will be on view for the exhibit's entire run of Oct. 18 through Jan. 3, 2027, thanks to a loan from the Museum by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
The bench is one of two consequential seats anchoring the exhibit. The other is a Windsor chair that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Historians believe the Founding Father used the high-backed wooden seat while drafting the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. It will be on loan from the American Philosophical Society through March 2026, when it will be swapped out for another piece of furniture Jefferson owned.
"The Declaration's Journey," one of the many attractions planned for America's semiquincentennial, will examine how the foundational document influenced subsequent leaders like King, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frederick Douglass, Mahatma Gandhi, Harvey Milk and the Marquis de Lafayette — many of whom were not granted the freedoms promised in the famous text. The museum plans to demonstrate those contradictions through the juxtaposition of objects like King's and Jefferson's wildly different chairs.
The Museum of the American Revolution has raised more than $500,000 to fund the exhibit, including grants from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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