16 April 1963
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 statement 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
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 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 mayoral
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 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 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, 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 still 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 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 are 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 sinful. 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 all 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: "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 irrational 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 all 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 other worldly 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? I 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 handling 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. 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 feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They 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.
Published in:
King, Martin Luther Jr.
