Lots of monkey heads to transplant in big cities, but blue bloods do not
mix with monkies from Planet of Apes.......letter from head honcho who
used bible calendar code.....for you see the call to Macedonia was a
call for the street people to destroy America - burning Washington, then
you had other disasters Watts...
Now from where I came, nice people did not mix with monkies....but since
you June and Joshua seem to have already had your transplants - would
seem your blood types mix.
Letter from Head Monkey - who did not use real name - letter coded -
anyone with half brain can see that, for this man used the bible
calendar - he lived by it and he died by it - all timed.........Come to
Macedonia was the call for rioting......
Note: Jack Ruby knew what was what; in his little jail cell after he
silenced Owald he cried over and over and over again - Shadrach,
Meschenk and Abenego......
>From where I come - no we will never have such people reign over
us.....as our leader said Keep Your Powder Dry and this time when the
Come to Macedonia Call is given - many a hand will reach for a rifle and
be prepared to defend themselves.
So as Clinton said - Let them get the first shot?
Saba
This Event In Black History
8: "Letter From A Birmingham Jail " by Martin Luther King
written:
April 16 1963
I got this from a mailing by Art "Spook sitting at the
proverbial door" McGee
(Note from the author: This response to a published statement by eight
fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph
A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B.
Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward
V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat
constricting circumstance. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in
which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was
continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro
trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted
to. leave me. Although the text remains in substance unaltered, I have
indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication.)
MY 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 good will 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 the Greco-Roman
world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own
home town. 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 Brimingham. 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 an 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 bad 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 with
with-drawal 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 Public Safety,
Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-oat 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 so to 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, we 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 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 dark 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-county
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 no 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 won ask: "How can
you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in
the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be
the Brat 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 distort 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 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 ace 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 fan 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 an its 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: "An
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 6e solid rock of human dignity.
You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was
rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent
efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that
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 an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we
will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We we be
extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist 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, Jeans 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 non segregated
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 Rio
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 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 leader era; an 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 other worldly religion which makes a strange,
on 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 Walleye 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. Par 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
vi 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 jai 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, ham and
all over the nation, because the goal of America k 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 pubic. 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. They 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. They will be 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 fleets is tired, but my soul is at
rest." They viii 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 k 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.
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~isbell/HFh/black/events_and_people/008.letter_from_jail
