Conference back40::soapbox

251.0. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by COVERT::COVERT (John R. Covert) Sun Jan 15 1995 11:19

Letter from Birmingham Jail (in part), written 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 goodwill 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 affiliate 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 exists here.  Just as
the prophets of the 8th century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus
saith the Lord" far afield, 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
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 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. ...

You may well ask, "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.?  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 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
readily acknowledge 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
shake off the bondage of myths and half-truths and rise to the 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 then dialogue. ...

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 with
impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers
smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
when you suddenly find your tongue twisted 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 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 unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people;
when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son 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, 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 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, 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 agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at
all." ...

Let us consider some of the ways in which a law can be unjust.  A law is unjust,
for example, if the majority group compels a minority group to obey the statute
but does not make it binding on itself.  By the same token, a law in all
probability is just if the majority is itself willing to obey it.  Also, 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 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. ...

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"; 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 goodwill 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 block 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 pus-flowing
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. ...

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 of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so completely
drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to
segregation, and 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 unconsciously 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 Muhammed'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 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. ...

Let me take note of my other major disappointment.  Though there are some
notable exceptions, I have also been disappointed with the white church and its
leadership.  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
and secure behind 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.  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 otherworldly religion which makes a strange, unbiblical distinction
between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

We are moving toward the close of the twentieth century with a religious
community largely adjusted to the status quo -- a taillight behind other
community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of
justice. ...

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, as the true ecclesia 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 torturous rides for
freedom.  Yes, they have gone to jail with us.  Some have been kicked out of
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 meed 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. ...

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 angry dogs sinking their
teeth into six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes.  I doubt that you would so quickly
commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhuman 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 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 Pritchert 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, there is no
greater treason than 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. ... 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 Judeo-
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.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  This momentous decree came as a great
beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the
flames of withering injustice.  It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long
night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is
still not free.  One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly
crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the
midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.  One hundred years later, the
Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself
an exile in his own land.  So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling
condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's Capital to cash a check.  When the
architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which
every American was to fall heir.  This note was a promise that all men would be
guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar
as her citizens of color are concerned.  Instead of honoring this sacred
obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has
come back marked "insufficient funds."  But we refuse to believe that the bank
of justice is bankrupt.  We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds
in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.  So we have come to cash this
check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the
security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency
of *now*.  This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the
tranquilizing drug of gradualism.  *Now* is the time to make real the promises
of democracy.  *Now* is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of
segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.  *Now* is the time to lift our
nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to
underestimate the determination of the Negro.  This sweltering summer of the
Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating
autumn of freedom and equality.  Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a
beginning.  Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will
now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as
usual.  There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro
is granted his citizenship rights.  The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to
shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm
threshold which leads into the palace of justice.  In the process of gaining our
rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.  Let us not seek to
satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and
hatred.  We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and
discipline.  We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical
violence.  Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting
physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead
us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as
evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny
is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our
freedom.  We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead.  We cannot
turn back.  There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When
will you be satisfied?"

We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable
horrors of police brutality.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of
travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the
cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller
ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a
Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls
down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and
tribulations.  Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells.  Some of you
have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the
storms of persecution and the winds of police brutality.  You have been the
veterans of creative suffering.  Continue to work with the faith that unearned
suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back
to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our
Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and
frustrations of the moment I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men
are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at
the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state
sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into
an oasis of freedom and justice.  I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of
their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are
presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be
transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be
able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together
as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and
mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the
crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope.  This is the faith with which I return to the South.  With
this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of
hope.  With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of
our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle
together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that
we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new
meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of this I sing.  Land
where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let
freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.  So let freedom
ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.  Let freedom ring from the
mighty mountains of New York.  Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies
of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!  Let freedom ring from
the curvaceous peaks of California!  But not only that; let freedom ring from
Stone Mountain of Georgia!  Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.  From every
mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every
hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day
when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, we
are free at last!"

28 August 1963

            Masterful & profound, and well worth re-reading.  Tnx.

    Yes...ditto!

           And who sez that Limbaugh has the only dittoheads??? :-)

    Re: 251.1 < I HAVE A DREAM >
    
    Thanks for entering that note!!  Definitely food for thought!
    
    steve