Martin Luther King Letter From Birmingham Jail Primary Source Review
Images above: Male monarch is ready for a mug shot (left) in Montgomery, Alabama, after his 1956 arrest while protesting the segregation of the urban center'south buses. His leadership of the successful 381-day jitney boycott brought him to national attention. Right: In 1967, King serves out the sentence from his abort four years earlier in Birmingham, Alabama.
In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, later he defied a state court'southward injunction and led a march of black protesters without a allow, urging an Easter boycott of white-endemic stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written past eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.
This prompted Rex to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled information technology out with the help of his lawyer, and the about 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent telephone call for "constructive, nonviolent tension" to force an cease to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights move. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.
The Atlantic published it in the August 1963 result, nether the headline "The Negro Is Your Blood brother."
My Dear Swain Clergymen:
While bars hither in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your contempo statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom practice I pause to respond criticism of my piece of work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would take little fourth dimension for annihilation other than such correspondence in the class of the day, and I would have no time for effective piece of work. Merely since I feel that you are men of genuine practiced will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to endeavour to respond your argument in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you accept been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Briefing, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some lxxx-five affiliated organizations beyond the S, and i of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and fiscal resources with our affiliates. Several months agone the chapter here in Birmingham asked united states of america to be on call to engage in a nonviolent directly-action program if such were deemed necessary. Nosotros readily consented, and when the hour came we lived upwardly to our promise. And so I, along with several members of my staff, am hither because I was invited here. I am hither because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham considering 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 but as the Campaigner Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, and then am I compelled to carry the gospel of liberty across my ain dwelling town. Similar Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian phone call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not exist 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 unmarried garment of destiny. Whatever affects one direct, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to alive 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 lot deplore the demonstrations taking identify in Birmingham. Only your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the atmospheric condition 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 furnishings and does not grapple with underlying causes. Information technology is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power construction left the Negro customs with no alternative.
In any irenic campaign at that place are iv basic steps: drove of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and straight action. We take 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, savage 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 grade of the negotiations, certain promises were fabricated by the merchants—for instance, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the footing 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. Every bit the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken hope. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.
As in so many by experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. Nosotros had no alternative except to fix for directly 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, nosotros decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and nosotros repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are y'all able to suffer the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action programme 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—production of direct action, nosotros felt that this would be the all-time fourth dimension to bring force per unit area to bear on the merchants for the needed change.
And so it occurred to us that the March election [for Birmingham'south mayor] was ahead, and then nosotros rapidly decided to postpone activeness until later election day. When nosotros discovered that Mr. Connor [the commissioner of public safety, Eugene "Balderdash" Connor] was in the runoff, we decided once again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to run into Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community demand, nosotros felt that our direct-activeness program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct activeness? Why sit-ins, marches and and so along? Isn't negotiation a ameliorate path?" Y'all are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crunch and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to face up the outcome. It seeks and then to dramatize the outcome that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension every bit part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. Merely I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed tearing tension, just there is a blazon of constructive, irenic tension which is necessary for growth. Just every bit Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rising from the bondage of myths and one-half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, and so must nosotros see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that volition 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 state of affairs then crisis-packed that it volition inevitably open up the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your phone call for negotiation. Too long has our honey Southland been bogged downward in a tragic effort to alive in monologue rather than dialogue.
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I of the bones points in your statement is that the activity 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 tin can give to this query is that the new Birmingham assistants must exist prodded well-nigh as much equally the outgoing one, before information technology will act. Nosotros are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell every bit 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 promise 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 non made a unmarried 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 come across the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; simply, every bit Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to exist more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded past the oppressed. Bluntly, I accept however to engage in a direct-activity campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who take not suffered unduly from the affliction of segregation. For years now I have heard the give-and-take "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come up to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more 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 nosotros still pitter-patter at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Maybe it is piece of cake for those who take never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." Simply when y'all accept seen roughshod mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when y'all accept seen hate-filled policemen expletive, kick and fifty-fifty kill your blackness brothers and sisters; when yous run into the vast bulk of your xx million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly observe your tongue twisted and your spoken communication stammering as you lot seek to explain to your six-twelvemonth-former girl why she can't get to the public entertainment park that has simply been advertised on goggle box, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is airtight to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental heaven, and meet her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when yous take to concoct an answer for a v-twelvemonth-erstwhile son who is request: "Daddy, why do white people care for colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country bulldoze and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your motorcar because no cabin will accept yous; when you lot are humiliated day in and day out past nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your centre name becomes "male child" (notwithstanding one-time you lot are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when y'all are harried by day and haunted by dark by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to wait next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"—then you volition understand why we discover it difficult to await. In that location comes a time when the loving cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can empathise our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
You express a not bad deal of anxiety over our willingness to suspension laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Courtroom's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at start glance it may seem rather paradoxical for usa consciously to break laws. 1 may well ask: "How tin can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are 2 types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the beginning 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 concur with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference betwixt the two? How does one determine whether a police force is only or unjust? A merely police is a homo-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 police. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is non rooted in eternal police and natural police. Any constabulary 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 amercement the personality. Information technology gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a fake sense of inferiority. Segregation, to utilise the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I–it" human relationship for an "I–thou" relationship and ends upward relegating persons to the condition of things. Hence segregation is not merely politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is non segregation an existential expression of human being's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I tin urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I tin can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally incorrect.
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 simply 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 some other 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 country's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to preclude Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, non a single Negro is registered. Can any police force enacted nether such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
Sometimes a police is just on its face and unjust in its application. For example, 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. Simply such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Subpoena privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to run across the distinction I am trying to bespeak out. In no sense do I abet evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to chaos. One who breaks an unjust police 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 penalisation of imprisonment in lodge 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 almost this kind of ceremonious defiance. Information technology 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. Information technology was proficient superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face up hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a caste, academic freedom is a reality today considering Socrates good civil defiance. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive human action of civil disobedience.
Nosotros should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Republic of hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to assist and comfort a Jew in Hitler'southward Germany. Even so, I am certain that, had I lived in Germany at the fourth dimension, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist state where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that state's antireligious laws.
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I must make ii honest confessions to yous, 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 nearly reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro'southward nifty stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "gild" 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 lot seek, but I cannot concur with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives past a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to look for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than accented misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm credence is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would empathize that law and guild exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they neglect in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that cake the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the Southward is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a noun and positive peace, in which all men volition respect the nobility and worth of human personality. Actually, we who appoint in irenic directly action are not the creators of tension. Nosotros only bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already live. We bring it out in the open, where it tin can be seen and dealt with. Similar a boil that can never be cured then long as it is covered up only 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 exist condemned considering they precipitate violence. Simply is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed homo because his possession of coin precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this similar condemning Socrates considering his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the deed by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this similar condemning Jesus considering his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God'southward will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? Nosotros must come to see that, as the federal courts take consistently affirmed, it is incorrect to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights considering 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 but received a alphabetic character from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights somewhen, simply it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity virtually two thousand years to accomplish what information technology has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of fourth dimension, from the strangely irrational notion that in that location is something in the very flow of time that volition inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it tin be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will accept used time much more than effectively than take the people of skillful will. We will have to repent in this generation not only for the hateful words and actions of the bad people simply for the appalling silence of the skilful people. Homo progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; information technology comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, fourth dimension itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the noesis that the fourth dimension is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of commonwealth and transform our awaiting national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to elevator our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid stone of homo dignity.
You lot speak of our action 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 near the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, fabricated upward in part of Negroes who, as a consequence 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-course Negroes who, because of a caste of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have go insensitive to the issues 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 diverse black nationalist groups that are springing upwardly across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished past the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who take lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white homo is an incorrigible "devil."
I have tried to stand betwixt these two forces, proverb that we demand emulate neither the "practice-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 building, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.
If this philosophy had non emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, exist flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of united states of america who employ nonviolent straight action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in blackness-nationalist ideologies—a development that would inevitably pb to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for liberty somewhen 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 defenseless up by the Zeitgeist, and with his blackness brothers of Africa and his brownish and xanthous brothers of Asia, S America and the Caribbean, the Usa Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised country of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, i should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking identify. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. And then let him march; permit him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; permit him continue Liberty Rides—and try to understand why he must do and so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent means, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat simply a fact of history. Then I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and good for you discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent straight activity. And at present this approach is existence termed extremist.
Only though I was initially disappointed at being categorized every bit an extremist, as I continued to think about the thing I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was non Jesus an extremist for honey: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that detest you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute y'all." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll downwards similar waters and righteousness like an e'er-flowing stream." Was non Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I carry in my trunk the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was non Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand up; I cannot practice otherwise, then help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the finish of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and one-half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We concord these truths to be cocky evident, that all men are created equal …" So the question is not whether we will exist extremists, simply what kind of extremists nosotros volition exist. Will nosotros be extremists for hate or for love? Volition 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 dear, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Peradventure the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I had hoped that the white moderate would encounter this demand. Possibly I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can sympathise the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer take the vision to meet that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, yet, 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, just they are big in quality. Some—such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Anne Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle—have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with united states downwards nameless streets of the S. They take languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the corruption and brutality of policemen who view them equally "muddied nigger-lovers." Unlike and 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 gainsay the affliction of segregation.
Let me take note of my other major thwarting. I have been so profoundly disappointed with the white church building and its leadership. Of course, at that place are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of yous has taken some meaning stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this by Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated ground. I commend the Cosmic leaders of this state for integrating Bound Hill Higher several years ago.
Simply despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church building. I practise non say this as i of those negative critics who can ever detect something wrong with the church building. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church building; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain truthful to information technology as long every bit the string 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 S would be amid our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to sympathise the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all as well many others accept been more cautious than mettlesome 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 run into the justice of our crusade and, with deep moral business concern, would serve equally the channel through which our just grievances could reach the ability construction. I had hoped that each of you would understand. Only again I accept been disappointed.
I accept heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the constabulary, 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 up 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 take heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I accept watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly organized religion which makes a foreign, un-Biblical distinction between torso 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 fall mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I accept beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious—education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship hither? 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 protestation?"
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep thwarting I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears take been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where at that place is not deep dearest. Yes, I love the church building. How could I practice otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yep, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we accept blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
In that location was a time when the church building was very powerful—in the fourth dimension when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was non merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular stance; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early on Christians entered a town, the people in ability became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for beingness "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," chosen to obey God rather than human. Pocket-sized in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to exist "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such aboriginal evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.
Things are dissimilar at present. And then oftentimes the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual vocalization with an uncertain sound. So frequently it is an archdefender of the condition quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the boilerplate community is consoled by the church'due south silent—and often fifty-fifty vocal—sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church building does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it volition lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed equally an irrelevant social club with no significant for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Possibly I have over again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the condition quo to save our nation and the world? Perchance I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church building, the church building within the church building, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But once more 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 liberty. They accept left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with usa. They accept gone downwards the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Aye, they have gone to jail with u.s.. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the back up of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that correct 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 every bit a whole volition meet the challenge of this decisive hour. Only even if the church does non come to the assist of justice, I have no despair about the futurity. I accept no fear about the issue of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are now misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, considering the goal of America is liberty. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were hither. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, nosotros were here. For more than than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they congenital 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 end us, the opposition we at present face up will surely fail. Nosotros will win our freedom considering the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Before closing I experience 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, irenic Negroes. I doubt that you would and then quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane handling of Negroes here in the city jail; if yous 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 usa food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham constabulary section.
It is truthful that the police have exercised a caste of discipline in treatment the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. Simply for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I accept consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must exist equally pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make articulate that it is wrong to use immoral ways to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or maybe even more so, to employ moral means to preserve immoral ends. Maybe Mr. Connor and his policemen accept been rather irenic in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of not-violence to maintain the immoral finish of racial injustice. Every bit T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To practice the right deed for the wrong reason."
I wish you lot had commended the Negro sit down-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to endure and their astonishing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One 24-hour interval the Southward volition recognize its real heroes. They will exist the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the disturbing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be quondam, oppressed, dilapidated Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-sometime adult female in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided non 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 residual." They will be the young high schoolhouse and higher 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 censor sake. I day the South volition know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality continuing upwards 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 dandy wells of democracy which were dug deep past the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Annunciation of Independence.
Never before have I written and so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious fourth dimension. I can assure you lot that it would accept been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, merely what else tin one do when he is solitary in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this alphabetic character 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 organized religion. 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 every bit a fellow chaplain and a Christian brother. Let u.s. all promise 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 polish over our groovy nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the crusade of Peace and Alliance,
Martin Luther Rex Jr.
This article appears in the special MLK upshot impress edition with the headline "Letter From Birmingham Jail" and was published in the August 1963 Atlantic as "The Negro Is Your Brother." © 1963 Dr. Martin Luther Rex Jr., © renewed 1991 Coretta Scott Male monarch. All works by Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. take been reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther Male monarch Jr., intendance of Writers Firm every bit amanuensis for the proprietor, New York, New York.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/letter-from-a-birmingham-jail/552461/
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