Today is a good day to remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King was jailed for campaigning against racial segregation in Birmingham, in violation of an injunction against anyone “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing.” His letter was written on the margins of a newspaper, scraps of paper that another prisoner gave to him, and then a legal pad that his attorney left behind. It has been an inspiration to millions of people; I am one of them. Here are some excerpts:
MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN: . . . .
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....
We have waited for more than 340 years for
our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa
are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but
we stiff[ly] creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of
coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never
felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have
seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your
sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen
curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see
the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an
airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you
suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek
to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public
amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see
tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Fu town 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-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,” 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 go 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....
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 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....
One day the South will recognize its real
heroes. There 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. There
will be the 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.” There 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?...
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.
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