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While
confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your
recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and
untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism
of my work and ideas. 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. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and
your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer
your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
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 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 affiliate organizations
all across the South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement
for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible, we share staff,
educational and financial resources with our affiliates. 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. We readily consented, and when the
hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with
several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am
here because I have basic organizational ties here.
Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because
injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their
little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord"
far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; 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 Greco-Roman
world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond
my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to
the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness
of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta
and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial
"outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the
United States can never be considered an outsider.
You deplore the demonstrations that
are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that
your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions
that brought the demonstrations into being. 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. 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.
In
any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection
of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation,
self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all
of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the
fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham
is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United
States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every
section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the
courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings
of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city
in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts.
On the basis of them, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the
city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to
engage in good-faith negotiation.
Then came the opportunity last September
to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In
these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants,
such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from
the stores. On the basis of these promises, Reverend Shuttlesworth
and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration. As the
weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims
of a broken promise. The signs remained. 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. 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. We
were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided
to go through a process of self-purification. We started having
workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions,
"Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?"
and "Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?" We
decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season,
realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest
shopping period of the year. 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. Then it occurred to us that the March election
was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until
after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in
the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration
could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed
to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff.
This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly
into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated,
so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this
community need. After this we felt that direct action 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 exactly right in your call for negotiation.
Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct
action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative
tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate
is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the
issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the
creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister.
This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not
afraid of the word "tension." 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 to rise from the
dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of
understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action
is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably
open the door to negotiation. We therefore concur with you in
your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland
been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather
than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement
is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, "Why didn't
you give the new administration time to act?" 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.
We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr.
Boutwell will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell
is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both
segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status
quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable
enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation.
But he will not see this without pressure from the 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. History is the long and tragic story of the 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
are 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 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. For years now I have heard the word "wait."
It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity.
This "wait" has almost always meant "never."
It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional
stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant
of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist
of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for
our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and
Africa are moving with jetlike 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 guess 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,
brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with
impunity; 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 cannot 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; 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?"; when you
take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night
after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because
no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day
out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored";
when your first name becomes "nigger" 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."; when you are
harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a
Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what
to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments;
when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodyness"
-- 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 an abyss of injustice
where they experience the bleakness of corroding 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, it is rather strange and paradoxical
to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, "How
can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?"
The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws:
there are just laws, and there are 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 when 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 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.
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. So segregation is not only politically,
economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong
and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't
segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation,
an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?
So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court
because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation
ordinances because they are morally wrong.
Let us turn to a more concrete example
of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority
inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is
difference made legal. On the other hand, 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. 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. Who can say that the legislature of
Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected?
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 Negroes constitute a majority of the
population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically
structured?
These are just a few examples of unjust
and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on
its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested
Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. 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.
Of course, there is nothing new about
this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the
refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of
Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. 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.
To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates
practiced civil disobedience.
We can never forget that everything
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. 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. 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.
I must
make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers.
First, I must confess that over the last 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 the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor
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 can't agree with your methods of direct action";
who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for
another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who
constantly advises the Negro to wait until 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.
In your statement you asserted that
our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they
precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made?
Isn't this like condemning the 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 delvings precipitated the misguided popular
mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn't this like condemning
Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion
to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? 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. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
I had also hoped that the white moderate
would reject the myth of 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?
It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what
it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth."
All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time.
It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something
in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually,
time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively.
I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time
much more effectively than the people of good will. 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. We must come to see that human progress never
rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless
efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with
God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of
the forces of social stagnation.
You
spoke 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 started 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 of Negroes
who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely
drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodyness"
that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand,
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. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred
and comes perilously close to advocating violence. 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. This movement is nourished by the contemporary
frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination.
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. 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.
There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest.
I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension
of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not
emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South
would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced
that if our white brothers dismiss 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.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed
forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what
has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded
him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded
him that he can gain it. 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.
Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community,
one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro
has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to
get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer
pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins
and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in
these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions
of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So
I have not said to my people, "Get rid of your discontent."
But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent
can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct
action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must
admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.
But as I continued to think about the
matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered
an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully
use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let
justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus
Christ? -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
Was not Martin Luther an extremist? -- "Here I stand; I can
do no other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist?
-- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make
a mockery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist?
-- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."
Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? -- "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what
kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate,
or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the
preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause
of justice?
I had hoped that the white moderate
would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too
much. I guess I 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 that have been oppressed,
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 have grasped
the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves
to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are
big in quality. Some, like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry
Golden, and James Dabbs, have written about our struggle in eloquent,
prophetic, and understanding terms. Others have marched with us
down nameless streets of the South. They sat in with us at lunch
counters and rode in with us on the freedom rides. They have languished
in fifty roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality
of angry policemen who see them as "dirty nigger lovers."
They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized
the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action"
antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
LET
me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been 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 this past Sunday
in welcoming Negroes to your Baptist Church worship service on
a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this
state for integrating Springhill 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 that as one of those negative critics who
can always find something wrong with the church. 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.
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 felt that the white ministers, priests, and
rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead,
some few 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 of
the past, 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 serve as the channel through which
our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped
that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous religious leaders
of the South call upon their worshipers 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. In the midst of blatant injustices
inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand
on the sidelines and merely 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 so many ministers
say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing
to do with," and I have watched so many churches commit themselves
to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction
between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular.
There was a time when the church was
very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians
rejoiced when they were 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 the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. 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." But they
went on with the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven"
and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number
but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically
intimidated." They brought an end to such ancient evils as
infanticide and gladiatorial contest.
Things are different now. The contemporary
church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain
sound. It is so often the arch supporter 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
often vocal sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the
church as never before. 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 twentieth century.
I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church
has risen to outright disgust.
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 presently 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 the destiny of America. Before
the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen
of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic
word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more
than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages;
they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters
in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation -- and
yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue 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.
I must close now. But before closing
I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that
troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police
force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence."
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. I don't believe you would so
quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly
and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you
would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro
girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young
boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions,
refusing to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together.
I'm sorry that I can't join you in your praise for the police
department.
It is true that they have been rather
disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In
this sense they have been publicly "nonviolent." But
for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation.
Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence
demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
So I have tried to make it 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 even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral
ends.
I wish you had commended the Negro
demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness
to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most
inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real
heroes. 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 the life of the pioneer.
They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized
in a seventy-two-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 ungrammatical profundity, "My feets is
tired, but my soul is rested." They will be young high school
and college students, 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's 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 the best in the American dream and the most sacred values
in our Judeo-Christian heritage.
Never before have I written a letter
this long -- or should I say a book? I'm afraid that 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 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?
If I have said anything in this letter
that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an
unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said
anything in this letter that is an overstatement 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.
Yours for the cause of Peace and
Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King
1963
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