I think about this and wonder how many young people would know about this, but also would it be attacked due to it's many "religious references"? Oh how times have changed in 50 years...
So here is http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/resources/article/annotated_letter_from_birmingham/
“Letter From Birmingham Jail”
April 16, 1963MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:
While confined here in the Birmingham
City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present
activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism
of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that
cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other
than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no
time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine
goodwill and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to
try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and
reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in
Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations
across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.
Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our
affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked
us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such
were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we
lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff,
am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have
organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham
because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century
B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far
beyond the boundaries of their home towns: and just as the Apostle Paul
left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to
the far corners of of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry
the gospel of freedom far beyond my own hometown. Like Paul, I must
constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the
interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in
Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can
we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea.
Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an
outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking
place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to
express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the
demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content
with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with
effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate
that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more
unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro
community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are
four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether
injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification;
and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in
Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice
engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly
segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is
widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the
courts. There have been more unsolved bombings
of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the
nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of
these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city
fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith
negotiation.
Then, last September, came the
opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In
the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the
merchants–for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs.On
the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed
to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by,
we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs,
briefly removed, returned; the others remained.
As in so many past experiences, our
hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled
upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action,
whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case
before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful
of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification.
We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked
ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you
able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our
direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for
Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a
strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct
action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to
bear on the merchants for the needed change.
Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's
mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to
postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the
Commissioner of Police Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor,
had piled up enough votes to be in the run-off, we decided again to
postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the
demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others,
we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured
postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we
felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins,
marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite
right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of
direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis
and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused
to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize
the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of
tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather
shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension."
I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of
constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates
felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that
individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the
unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must
we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in
society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and
racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program
is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open
the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for
negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a
tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your
statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in
Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new
city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to
this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded
about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly
mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell
as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is
a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both
segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope
that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of
massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without
pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you
that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined
legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that
privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.
Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust
posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that
freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded
by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action
campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not
suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have
heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing
familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come
to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long
delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa
are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence,
but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of
coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never
felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have
seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your
sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen
curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see
the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an
airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you
suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek
to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public
amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see
tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to
colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to
form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her
personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;
when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is
asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when
you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night
after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no
motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by
nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name
becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are)
and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never
given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and
haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at
tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued
with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a
degenerating sense of "nobodiness"–then you will understand why we find
it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable
impatience.
You express a great deal of anxiety over
our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern.
Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954
outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may
seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well
ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The
answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and
unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not
only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely,
one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree
with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the
two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law
is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An
unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put
it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas:
An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and
natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law
that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are
unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the
personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and
the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the
terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou"
relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.
Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and
sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich
has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential
expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his
terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954
decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge
them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example
of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or
power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make
binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same
token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow
and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let me give another explanation. A law
is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being
denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law.
Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's
segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all
sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming
registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though
Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is
registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered
democratically structured?
Sometimes a law is just on its face and
unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a
charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in
having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an
ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to
deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the
distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading
or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead
to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly,
and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an
individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust. and who
willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the
conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing
the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar,
on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced
superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions
and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to
certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom
is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our
own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil
disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did
in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in
Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the
time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I
lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the
Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that
country's antireligious laws.
I must make two honest confessions to
you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over
the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white
moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the
Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner,
but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice;
who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I
agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your
methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the
timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of
time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more
convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is
more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate
would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of
establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become
the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present
tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an
obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his
unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men
will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we
who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension.
We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a
boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be
opened with allits ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light,
injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to
the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it
can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our
actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they
precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like
condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the
evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his
unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries
precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock?
Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness
and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of
crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have
consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his
efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may
precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the
robber.
I had also hoped that the white moderate
would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for
freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He
writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal
rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a
religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to
accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to
earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from
the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow
of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is
neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and
more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more
effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in
this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad
people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress
never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the
tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without
this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social
stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time
is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of
democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm
of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the
quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
You speak of our activity in Birmingham
as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen
would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began
thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing
forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in
part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so
drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have
adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who,
because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in
some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the
problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred,
and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed
in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the
nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement.
Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of
racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost
faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who
have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."
I have tried to stand between these two
forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the
complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For
there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am
grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way
of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.
If this philosophy had not emerged, by
now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with
blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as
"rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ
nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent
efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek
solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies–a development that
would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed
forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that
is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has
reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has
reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has
been caught up by the Zeitgeist,
and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers
of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is
moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial
justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro
community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are
taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent
frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make
prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides–and
try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not
released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence;
this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my
people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that
this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative
outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being
termed extremist.
But
though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an
extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a
measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for
love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and
persecute you." Was not Amos
an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist
for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan:
"I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of
my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half
slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." So the question is not
whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.
Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for
the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that
dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never
forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of
extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their
environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth
and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South,
the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I had hoped that the white moderate
would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected
too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the
oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings
of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that
injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined
action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the
South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed
themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big
in quality. Some–such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle–have
written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have
marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have
languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and
brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so
many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the
urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action"
antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
Let me take note of my other major
disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white
church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions.
I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some
significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings,
for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to
your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic
leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.
But despite these notable exceptions, I
must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I
do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find
something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel,
who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been
sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as
long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama,
a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I
felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be
among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents,
refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its
leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and
have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass
windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came
to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this
community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral
concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances
could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would
understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have
heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to
comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have
longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because
integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In
the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched
white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and
sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid
our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers
say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real
concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a
completely otherworldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical
distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth
of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering
summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's
beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have
beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education
buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of
people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the
lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace
gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of
support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from
the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative
protest?"
Yes, these questions are still in my
mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church.
But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no
deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the
church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of
being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I
see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and
scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being
nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was
very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being
deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church
was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of
popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of
society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in
power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians
for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the
Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of
heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were
big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically
intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such
ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.
Things are different now. So often the
contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain
sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being
disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the
average community is consoled by the church's silent–and often even
vocal–sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the
church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the
sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity,
forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant
social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet
young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into
outright disgust.
Perhaps I have once again been too
optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status
quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to
the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia
and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some
noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from
the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in
the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and
walked the streets of Albany, Georgia,
with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous
rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been
dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops
and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right
defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the
spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in
these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark
mountain of disappointment.
I hope the church as a whole will meet
the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not
come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have
no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our
motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom
in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is
freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up
with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were
here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the
Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here.
For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country
without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their
masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation–and yet
out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If
the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition
we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the
sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied
in our echoing demands.
Before closing I feel impelled to
mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me
profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force
for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would
have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs
sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you
would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly
and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to
watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you
were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you
were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us
food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in
your praise of the Birmingham police department.
It is true that the police have
exercised a degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this
sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public.
But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over
the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands
that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried
to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral
ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even
more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor
and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
I wish you had commended the Negro
sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage,
their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of
great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes.
There will be the James Merediths,
with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and
hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the
life of the pioneer. There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro
women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery,
Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided
not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical
profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired,
but my soul is at rest." There will be the young high school and college
students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders,
courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and
willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will
know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch
counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the
American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian
heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of
democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their
formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written so long a
letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can
assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing
from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a
narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and
pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter
that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I
beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the
truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for
anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
I hope this letter finds you strong in
the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for
me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights
leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all
hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and
the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched
communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of
love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their
scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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