Letter from Birmingham City Jail
KING, MARTIN LUTHER Jr.
Letter from Birmingham City Jail By Martin Luther King Jr. April 16, 1963 My Dear Fellow Clergymen, While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling...
...But again I have been disappointed...
...I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws...
...Whenever necessary and possible we share staff, educational, and financial resources with our affiliates...
...But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim...
...I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait...
...They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of angry policemen who see them as "dirty nigger lovers...
...when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments...
...Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country...
...Let me give another explanation...
...If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me...
...This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action...
...It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved...
...I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great grandson of preachers...
...T. S. Eliot has said that there is no greater treason than to do the right deed for the wrong reason...
...In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence...
...So, after all, maybe the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists...
...So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation...
...So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here...
...The urge for freedom will eventually come...
...But be assured that my tears have been tears of love...
...We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr...
...Some have asked, "Why didn't you give the new administration time to act...
...They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the Gospel and a host of the elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience's sake...
...In deep disappointment, I have wept over the laxity of the Church...
...I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith...
...The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above His environment...
...Maybe I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the Church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world...
...All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality...
...You may well ask, "Why direct action...
...As in so many experiences of the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us...
...Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber...
...I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle...
...This is sameness made legal...
...In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion...
...Was not Amos an extremist for justice?Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream...
...The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence...
...These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts...
...If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws...
...You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws...
...Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood...
...Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non-segregated basis...
...After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer...
...I don't believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes...
...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere...
...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...
...I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies...
...I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will...
...The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations...
...I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative...
...Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love...
...I love her sacred walls...
...who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice...
...For more than two centuries our foreparents labored in this country without wages...
...But now 1 must aihrm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends...
...The hope I see in Mr...
...Why sit-ins, marches, etc...
...understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides...
...They were small in number but big in commitment...
...I commend you, Rev...
...Any law that degrades human personality is unjust...
...One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation, and of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses...
...Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured...
...History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily...
...Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day...
...We too wanted to see Mr...
...They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated...
...At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of the extremist...
...I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that 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 see the need of having 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...
...When we discovered that Mr...
...But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly...
...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...
...Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation...
...I'm afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time...
...I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry...
...I have beheld the impressive outlay of her massive religious education buildings...
...But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of civil rights...
...Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will...
...Let me rush on to mention my other disappointment...
...The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts...
...if you had watched them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls...
...An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote...
...We started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating...
...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 the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, and thus carrying our whole nation back to great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence...
...So I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent...
...Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world...
...It has been a tranquilizing Thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration...
...Some have been kicked out of their churches and lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers...
...Let me give another example of just and unjust laws...
...something without has reminded him that he can gain it...
...Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here...
...when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" men and "colored...
...One day the South will recognize its real heroes...
...Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection...
...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 little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people...
...if you had seen them slap and kick old Negro men and young Negro boys...
...Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood...
...So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be...
...He has to get them out...
...I hope the Church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour...
...My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure...
...On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself...
...I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law...
...Connor, they are both segregationists dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo...
...But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being...
...Now there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust...
...The signs remained...
...I am here because I have basic organizational ties here...
...Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary...
...If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence...
...And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss us as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators"?those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action—and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare...
...I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negroes' great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' "Counciler" or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice...
...There are some Instances when a law is just on its face but unjust in its application...
...We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with...
...To preserve the evil system of segregation...
...when you have seen hatefilled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity...
...Where were they when Governor Wallace gave the clarion call for defiance and hatred...
...Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness...
...Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist ?This nation cannot survive half slave and half free...
...Albert] Bout-well will bring the millennium to Birmingham...
...Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension...
...We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right...
...For years now I have heard the word "Wait...
...It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire...
...You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham...
...Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification...
...In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern," and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular...
...There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community...
...Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas...
...I have been so greatly disappointed with the white Church and its leadership...
...How could I do otherwise...
...Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home town, and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town...
...We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights...
...Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock...
...all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows...
...This is what has happened to the American Negro...
...Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ...
...This would lead to anarchy...
...We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied...
...Of course there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience...
...Was not Jesus an extremist in love?Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you...
...This is certainly a legitimate concern...
...Some like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms...
...Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed," according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation...
...But I am sure that, if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal...
...Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators...
...April 16, 1963 My Dear Fellow Clergymen, While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely...
...We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people...
...Of course there are some notable exceptions...
...One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws...
...We decided to set our direct action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with the exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year...
...Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 oudawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws...
...so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need...
...I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it...
...It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority...
...But they have gone with the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant...
...Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States...
...If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day and I would have no time for constructive work...
...Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community...
...Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away, that the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and that in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty...
...We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal...
...This is not a threat...
...In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive...
...Was not Paul an extremist for the Gospel of Jesus Christ?I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus...
...On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at her beautiful churches with their spires pointing heavenward...
...In this sense they have been rather publicly "nonviolent...
...Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders...
...it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society...
...An unjust law is a mode that is out of harmony with the moral law...
...I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers...
...I guess 1 should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those who have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action...
...But even if the Church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future...
...We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive...
...Yes, these questions are still in my mind...
...they made cotton "king...
...These men have been the leaven in the lump of the race...
...It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators...
...We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny...
...They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment...
...First I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate...
...We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism...
...I say it 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...
...Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws...
...Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the Gospel in these troubled times...
...The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound...
...They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality...
...We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises...
...Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail...
...There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love...
...The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws...
...An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself...
...it is a fact of history...
...I would agree with Saint Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all...
...We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom...
...I can do none other so help me God...
...I have tried to stand between these two forces saying that we need not follow the "do-nothingism" of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist...
...On the basis of these conditions Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers...
...when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: "Daddy, ¦why do white people treat colored people so mean...
...They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest...
...I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community...
...Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality...
...I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white Church...
...I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood...
...Maybe I expected too much...
...I am meeting young people every day whose disappointment with the Church has risen to outright disgust...
...Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity...
...They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose, facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes th?life of the pioneer...
...I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in...
...I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother...
...Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here...
...and 4) direct action...
...Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr...
...Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist...
...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...
...I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi, and all the other Southern states...
...To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I-it" relationship for the "I-thou" relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things...
...Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America...
...I had hoped that each of you would understand...
...They have gone through the highways of the South on torturous rides for freedom...
...It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills...
...But the judgment of God is upon the Church as never before...
...who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action...
...We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability...
...It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed...
...But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would Uke to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms...
...Maybe I was too optimistic...
...So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I oan urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong...
...We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham...
...Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action...
...While Mr...
...Any law that uplifts human personality is just...
...it must be demanded by the oppressed...
...In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do...
...So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community...
...Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery...
...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 to do this they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress...
...Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country...
...Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom...
...Maybe Mr...
...I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is merely a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, where the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substance-filled positive peace, where all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality...
...It 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 incurable "devil...
...Isn't negotiation a better path...
...But 1 have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action...
...How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and fear of being nonconformist...
...when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society...
...It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement...
...One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely...
...They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us...
...Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion...
...So let him march sometime...
...Was not John Bunyan an extremist?I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience...
...who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom...
...We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian Freedom Fighters did in Hungary was "illegal...
...Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations...
...I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes...
...It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored...
...At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the run-off...
...To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law...
...If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail...
...In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified...
...It can be used either destructively or constructively...
...We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved...
...You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence...
...Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South...
...There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest...
...They, unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation...
...Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here...
...There was a time when the Church was very powerful...
...Over the last few years 1 have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek...
...Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa, and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice...
...who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season...
...I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham...
...It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity...
...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 vocal sanction of things as they are...
...Over and over again I have found myself asking: "Who worships here...
...But for what purpose...
...So here we are moving toward the exit of the 20th century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice...
...I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the Church...
...Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes...
...I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time...
...Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly...
...Imust close now...
...So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful...
...Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist...
...To a degree academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience...
...But they went on with the conviction that they were a "colony of heaven" and had to obey God rather than man...
...Like Paul, I must constandy respond to the Macedonian call for aid...
...I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister...
...Who can say the Legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected...
...let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall...
...Was not Martin Luther an extremist?Here I stand...
...These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws...
...So we decided to go through a process of self-purification...
...This "wait" has almost always meant "never...
...It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany...
...It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo...
...Connor and his policemen have been rather publicly nonviolent, as Chief Prichett was in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of flagrant racial injustice...
...Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue...
...Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or will we be extremists for the cause of justice...
...But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension...
...Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture...
...You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme...
...One may well ask, "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others...
...Things are different now...
...We must come to see, as Federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence...
...If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me...
...I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience...
...Eugene "Bull"] Connor was in the run-off, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues...
...2) negotiation...
...The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter...
...I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue...
...It has taken Christianity almost 2,000 years to accomplish what it has...
...In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants—such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores...
...Imust make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers...
...3) self-purification...
...If this philosophy had not emerged I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood...
...This is difference made legal...
...Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment...
...Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever...
...Actually time is neutral...
...But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist...
...Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation...
...This may sound rather shocking...
...Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea...
...You are exactly right in your call for negotiation...
...Maybe again I have been too optimistic...
...They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a 72-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with un-grammatical profundity: "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested...
...But despite these notable exceptions I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the Church...
...The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth...
...but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals...
...Connor defeated...
...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...
...Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue...
...A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God...
...1 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 the most inhuman provocation...
...It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work 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...
...But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation...
...All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time...
...We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor...
...We have some 85 affiliate organizations all across the South?one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights...
...There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than any city in this nation...
...But can this assertion be logically made...
...if you had observed them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together...
...For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit...
...In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I come 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, serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure...
...We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation...
...when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs...
...Yes, they have gone to jail with us...
...Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote despite the fact that the Negro constitutes a majority of the population...
...Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...
...I had hoped that the white moderate would see this...
...There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair...
...One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly (not hatefully as the white mothers did in New Orleans when they were seen on television screaming "nigger, nigger, nigger") and with a willingness to accept the penalty...
...Who is their God...
...Where were their voices of support when tired, bruised, and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest...
...We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands...
...when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait...
...I don't believe you would have so quickly commended the policemen if you had observed their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail...
...As the weeks and months unfolded we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise...
...Yes, I love the Church...
...I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized...
...On the basis of these promises Reverend Shuttles-worth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration...
...But, oh...
...Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically structured...
...How does one determine when a law is just or unjust...
...Now what is the difference between the two...
...This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination...
...Never before have I written a letter this long (or should I say a book...
...In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities...
...If the Church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20th century...
...and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop...
...I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Springhill College several years ago...
...I'm sorry that I can't join you in your praise for the police department...
...I hope you can see the distinction I am trying to point out...
...So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends...
Vol. 51 • April 1968 • No. 9
