Author's note: This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat constricting circumstance. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me. Although the text remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication.

April 16, 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements 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[1], an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights[2]. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul [3] left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants—for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth[4] and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor[6], had piled up enough votes to be in the run-off we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr[7] has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine[8] that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas[9]: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber[10], substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich[11] said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered.[12] Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar[13], on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement[14]. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides—and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. We 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, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle[16]—have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Walleye gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in pubic. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he k alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

______________________

Notes

1 Southern Christian Leadership Conference—U.S. nonsectarian agency founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in 1957 to assist local organizations working for equal rights for African Americans. Operating primarily in the South, it conducted leadership-training programs, citizen-education projects, and voter-registration drives. It played a major role in the historic March on Washington in 1963 and in the campaigns to urge passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After King's assassination in 1968, Ralph Abernathy became president. In the early 1970s the SCLC was weakened by several schisms, including the departure of Jesse Jackson, who founded Operation PUSH in Chicago.

2 Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights—a civil rights organization formed in 1956 after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was banned in that state. The ACMHR participated in major demonstrations in Birmingham between 1956 and 1965, from organizing boycotts of segregated businesses, to challenging segregation laws in court. This newsletter from 1961 documents some of the activities of the ACHMR; a program and donation card illustrate the group's fundraising efforts.

3 Apostle Paul—Of all the apostles, Paul stands out as the one who was the traveler par excellence. His journeys through the length and breadth of the ancient world are nothing short of remarkable and given the difficulties of traveling in these times, let alone the animosity and danger he faced trying to convert populations to the new faith, it is a credit to the endurance and tenacity of the man that he accomplished as much as he did. Paul, originally Saul, was born in Tarsus in what is now southern Turkey and changed his name after converting Sergius Paulus. He is traditionally represented as a stocky little man, with a bald head and a grey, bushy beard. He studied Jewish law in Jerusalem under the famous rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). He and his parents were Roman citizens, having special rights and privileges. Roman citizens could not be imprisoned without a trial nor could they be scourged or crucified. His Roman citizenship saved Paul many times during his ministry. He made three great missionary journeys before being arrested in Jerusalem and taken to Rome where he was beheaded in AD 62.

4 Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth—born in Alabama on 18th March, 1922. After graduating from Selma University (1951) and Alabama State College (1952), Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in 1953. In May 1956 Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). In December, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation in Montgomery was illegal. Immediately, Shuttlesworth announced that the ACMHR would test segregation laws in Birmingham. On Christmas Day, 1956, Shuttlesworth home was bombed but he escaped unhurt. In 1957 Shuttlesworth joined Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Bayard Rustin to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the main objective of the SCLC was to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans. The new organization was committed to using nonviolence in the struggle for civil rights, and SCLC adopted the motto: "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed." Shuttlesworth's civil rights activities made him a target of white racists and on the evening of 25th December, 1956, Shuttlesworth survived a bomb blast that destroyed his house. The following year a white mob beat Shuttlesworth with whips and chains during an attempt to integrate an all-white public school. During this period Martin Luther King described Shuttlesworth as "the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South." In 1960 Shuttlesworth participated in the sit-in protests against segregated lunch counters and in 1961 helped Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) organize its Freedom Rides. He also led the mass demonstrations against segregation in Birmingham and this resulted in him being hospitalized in May, 1963, after being slammed against a wall by water from fire hoses. In 1966 Shuttlesworth became pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church. He has also served as director of the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, an organization which helps low-income families to buy their own homes, that he established in 1988. Shuttlesworth still works at the Greater New Light Baptist Church and so far his Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation has assisted 460 low-income families.

5 Eugene "Bull" Conner—the Police Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when protests led by Fred Shuttlesworth, King, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference brought the city to a halt. Conner's use of fire-hoses and attack-dogs to suppress peaceful protestors was televised nationally; his violence thus served, as King put it, "to subpoena the conscience of the nation."

6 gadfly—a term for people who upset the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or attempt to stimulate innovation by proving an irritant. The term "gadfly" was used by Plato to describe Socrates' relationship of uncomfortable goad to the Athenian politician scene, which he compared to a slow and dimwitted horse. It was used earlier by the prophet Jeremiah in chapter 46 of his book. The term has been used to describe many politicians and social commentators. During his defense when on trial for his life, Socrates, according to Plato's writings, pointed out that dissent, like the tiny (relative to the size of a horse) gadfly, was easy to swat, but the cost to society of silencing individuals who were irritating could be very high. "If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me," because his role was that of a gadfly, "to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

7 Reinhold Neibuhr (1892-1971) During his lifetime, Reinhold Niebuhr was the best-known Christian intellectual in the United States. Ordained as a minister in the German Evangelical Synod of North America in 1913, Neibuhr pastored a middle-class congregation in Detroit for 13 years. In 1928 he began a career-long association with New York's Union Theological Seminary, serving as professor of Christian ethics (1928-60) and dean (1950-60). Niebuhr neither created nor defended a particular belief system as much as he worked to apply Christian morals to contemporary political and social problems. His theological stance has been described as "Christian realism," and most of his work was devoted to reconciling the concept of perfect love with a world in constant violent conflict. A prolific writer and a popular, engaging lecturer, Niebuhr became a national celebrity and influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and policy makers in the administration of President John Kennedy. His books include Does Civilization Need Religion? (1927), The Nature and Destiny of Man (2 volumes, 1941-43) and Faith and History (1949). He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Niebuhr is credited with authoring what has been called the Serenity Prayer, a form of which is used by Alcoholics Anonymous. One version of it goes like this: God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed; give me courage to change things which must be changed; and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other. In his early years Reinhold Niebuhr was an active socialist, and he advocated early intervention against Adolf Hitler in World War II, and by the end of the war he condemned totalitarian communism.

8 St. Augustine (354-430) Augustine was born in a Roman province and educated at Carthage. As a young man he became interested in philosophy, with little interest in Christianity until a religious experience in his early thirties. By 396 he had become bishop of Hippo, and his sermons and writings gained fame, notably his Confessions and the treatise City of God. His notions of God's grace, free will and Original Sin had a great influence on Christian theology.

9 St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Thomas Aquinas was a priest, professor and philosopher who influenced centuries of religious and academic thought with his methodical way of harmonizing faith and reason. Born to nobility in southern Italy, he became attracted to life as a monk and scholar while a university student in Naples. He joined the Dominican religious order, but his family locked him in their castle tower, hoping to change his mind. A year later he escaped, studied in Cologne and Paris, was ordained a priest, and taught in universities during the Scholastic era, when the ancient logic of Aristotle was being revived despite condemnations by the Roman Catholic Church. Aquinas reconciled the two by granting reason its own integrity. He used Aristotelian arguments to "prove" God's existence and the truth of Christian beliefs, but held that some doctrinal truths are revealed only by faith. He painstakingly questioned-and-answered his way through two major works: Summa Contra Gentiles ("Summary of Arguments against the Disbelievers) and his final synthesis, Summa Theologica. His thinking, later called Thomism, was rapidly adopted by the church. Known as "the angelic doctor," he was canonized in 1323. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII declared Aquinas's works "the only true philosophy." "Aquinas" is a Latinized form of his family's Italian name, which reflected their domain over an area including the county of Aquino. He was born in the castle of his parents, Count Ladolfo and Countess Theodora d'Aquino, halfway between Rome and Naples. Aquinas's uncle was Frederick II, a maverick leader of the Holy Roman Empire. Thommaso was named for his grandfather, who had been the Empire's military commander.

10 Martin Buber (1878-1965) The life and thought of Martin Buber are intimately related to the problems and the fate of modern Judaism. He experienced as a young man the spiritual estrangement and confusion which have often been the lot of modern Jews; as a Jewish scholar and teacher in Germany during the 1930s, the increasingly ruthless suppression of Jews by the Nazis; and as a Zionist, the building of the nation of Israel during and after World War II. Yet precisely in and through his reverent exploration of the Jewish tradition and his concrete identification with his people's destiny, Buber was a truly universal man whose life and insights belong to everyone. He was also influenced by existentialism through the writings of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky. Buber contributed importantly to 20th-century philosophy by offering a creative alternative to the impasse between science-dominated philosophies which reduce human reality to mechanistic terms and idealistic philosophies which abstract the human spirit from its embeddedness in the world and human community. In I and Thou (1922) he analyzes man's two types of relationship to reality, I-It and I-Thou. In the I-It relation, I deal with the world and other persons functionally, manipulatively, as "things" to be investigated and used. This is an inescapable and necessary relation to reality which is not evil in itself but becomes evil insofar as it constantly tends to dominate and shut out another, more profound relation, the I-Thou. In the I-Thou relation, I encounter the world, other persons, and God as Thou in interpersonal dialogue which opens up the true depths of reality and summons to ethical responsibility in the midst of life. Among Buber's philosophical writings, besides I and Thou, mention should be made of Between Man and Man (1947) and Eclipse of God (1952).

11 Paul Tillich (1886-1965) German-American Protestant theologian and philosopher, ranks as one of the most important and influential theologians of the 20th century. He explored the meaning of Christian faith in relation to the questions raised by philosophical analysis of human existence. Together with thinkers such as Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich helped revolutionize Protestant theology. All three were influenced by the recovery of neglected insights in the Bible, the discovery of existentialism through the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, and the crisis in Western culture wrought by World War I.

12 Poll taxes and other disincentives for African American voting were related to the Jim Crow laws—Laws or practices designed to separate whites and blacks in public and private facilities. Used in Southern states of the United States to preserve segregated schools, transport facilities, and housing, until the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ was declared unconstitutional in 1954. Poll taxes were taxes levied on citizens for voting rights. A racially motivated poll tax came into use in the late nineteenth century. The Twenty‐fourth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1964, outlawed poll tax payments in federal elections. Another method for preventing African Americans from voting was the grandfather clause, a clause in the constitutions of several southern states before the year 1915, intended to disfranchise African Americans by exempting from stringent voting requirements all lineal descendants of persons who were registered voters before 1867.

13 Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego were three friends of the prophet Daniel in the Bible. Like him they were youths from the Jewish nobility. At the first deportation of the Jews by Nebuchadnezzar (the kingdom of Israel had come to an end nearly a century before at the hands of the Assyrians), or immediately after his victory over the Egyptians at the second battle of Carchemish, in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim (B.C. 606), these three and Daniel were among the Jewish young nobility carried off to Babylon (probably as hostages to ensure the loyalty of Judah's king and advisors), along with some of the vessels of the temple. They were subsequently evaluated and chosen for their intellect and beauty, to be trained as Chaldeans (members of the class of the magi: astrologers, sorcerers, enchanters and magicians), who constituted the ranks of the advisors to the Babylonian court. At one point early on in their training, they were assigned a daily amount of food and wine from the king's own table. Following Daniel's lead, they asked for permission not to eat the food, which had been offered to idols and was therefore unclean according to their laws. But the official in charge of them feared that if the king saw them looking ill, he might face execution. So they asked for a ten-day test: they would be given nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. At the end of the ten days, they would be compared with the young men who ate the royal food and treated accordingly. The test was conducted, and at the end of ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. Some time later, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold and set it up in Babylon. He ordered that whenever the people heard the sound of the "horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes, and all kinds of music," they would bow down and worship the image or else be thrown into a blazing furnace. But Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego would not bow down or worship the image. Some of the king's astrologers told him so, and he ordered that they be brought before them. He questioned them and repeated his threat, but the three men insisted that they would not worship the idol, faithful that their God would save them. Angrily, the king ordered that the furnace be made seven times hotter than usual and that the three men be tied up and thrown in. The flames were so hot that the soldiers who threw them in were killed on the spot. But when King Nebuchadnezzar looked in, he saw Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego walking around unbound and unharmed, along with a fourth man whom the king said looked "like a son of the gods." (Daniel 3:25) (The fourth man is believed to have been either an angel or a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ). The king called to them to come out, and they did so completely unharmed, not even smelling of smoke or fire. So the king lauded their faith and decreed that anyone who spoke against the God of Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego would be "cut to pieces and their houses turned to piles of rubble."

14 Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) the leader of the Nation of Islam ("Black Muslims") during their period of greatest growth in the mid-20th century. He was a major advocate of independent, black-operated businesses, institutions, and religion. Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah (or Robert) Poole on October 7, 1897, near Sandersville, Georgia. His parents were ex-slaves who worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation; his father was also a Baptist preacher. As a youngster Elijah worked in the fields and on the railroad, but he left home at age 16 to travel and work at odd jobs. He settled in Detroit in 1923, working on a Chevrolet assembly line. Poole and his two brothers became early disciples of W.D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam. Fard, of mysterious background, appeared in Detroit in 1930, selling silk goods and telling his customers in Detroit's African American ghetto of their ancestral "homeland" across the seas. Soon Fard began holding meetings in homes, and then in rented halls, telling his listeners tales purporting to describe their nonwhite kin in other lands and urging them to emulate these brothers and sisters in such matters as dress and diet. Fard proclaimed Islam the one correct religion for African Americans, denouncing Christianity as the religion of the slavemasters. His meetings became dominated by his bitter denunciations of the white race. Soon Fard announced the opening of the Temple of Islam. It featured much antiwhite invective and embodied an unorthodox form of Islam, but the movement also emphasized African American self-help and education. Fard disappeared, as mysteriously as he had arrived, in the summer of 1934. The movement he had founded quickly developed several factions, the most important of which was led by Poole, who had become a top lieutenant to Fard and whose name along the way had been changed to Elijah Muhammad. The movement had long had a policy of requiring members to drop their "slave" names. Settling in Chicago, away from hostile Muslim factions in Detroit, Muhammad built what quickly became the most important center of the movement. Chicago soon featured not only a Temple of Islam, but a newspaper called Muhammad Speaks, a University of Islam (actually a private elementary and high school), and several movement-owned apartment houses, grocery stores, and restaurants. Temples were opened in other cities, and farms were purchased so that ritually pure food could be made available to members. The movement was a sharply disciplined one. Members had strict rules to follow regarding eating (various foods, such as pork, were forbidden), smoking and drinking (both banned), dress and appearance (conservative, neat clothing and good grooming were required), and all kinds of personal behavior (drugs, the use of profanity, gambling, listening to music, and dancing were all outlawed). Muhammad also revised the theology of the movement. Under his system, Fard was proclaimed the earthly incarnation of Allah, the Muslim name for God; (Elijah) Muhammad was his divinely-appointed prophet. Muhammad also taught that blacks constituted the original human beings, but that a mad black scientist named Yakub had created a white beast through genetic manipulation and that whites had been given a temporary dispensation to govern the world. That period, however, was due to end soon; now the time was at hand for blacks to resume their former dominant role. It was understood that violent war would be likely before the transition could be completed. In the meantime, Muhammad advocated an independent nation for African Americans. In 1942 Muhammad was one of a group of militant African American leaders arrested on charges of sedition, conspiracy, and violation of the draft laws. He was accused of sympathizing with the Japanese during World War II and of encouraging his members to resist the military draft. He had, indeed, argued that all nonwhites are oppressed by whites, and that it made no sense for African Americans to fight those who were victims of white racism as much as they themselves were. Muhammad was certainly no pacifist, but he argued that the only war in which African Americans should participate would be the coming "Battle of Armageddon," in which blacks would reassert their rightful superiority. For his words and actions Muhammad spent four years, from 1942 to 1946, in federal prison at Milan, Michigan. Factions occasionally withdrew from Muhammad's movement. In the early 1960s Muhammad came to be overshadowed by the charismatic Malcolm X, leader of the New York Temple. Tensions between Malcolm X and Muhammad's leadership grew; finally, after Malcolm X commented that John F. Kennedy's assassination was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost," Muhammad suspended him. Shortly thereafter, in 1964, Malcolm X founded his own movement, which moved toward a more orthodox form of Islam. However, Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965. Elijah Muhammad died on February 25, 1975. After his death the leadership of his movement passed to his son, Wallace (now Warith) Deen Muhammad. The younger Muhammad renamed the movement the World Community of Al-Islam in the West, and then the American Muslim Mission; he also began to call blacks "Bilalians," after Bilal, who was said to have been an African follower of the prophet Muhammad. Warith Muhammad relaxed the strict dress code, abandoned resistance to military service, encouraged members to vote and to salute the flag, and even opened the movement to whites. In general, he made the movement much more conventionally Islamic. Many members were disturbed at the movement's new, moderate direction and withdrew to form more traditionalist splinter groups. The most important of them retained the old name, the Nation of Islam, and was led by Louis Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott of British West Indian parents in 1934). Farrakhan generally retained Elijah Muhammad's ideas and practices, including the strict behavioral rules. He achieved prominence when he became a major adviser to Jesse Jackson during the latter's presidential campaign in 1984. At that time Farrakhan aroused controversy, particularly for his reported death threats directed at Jackson's Jewish critics.

14 Amos (flourished 8th century BC) Earliest Hebrew prophet (one of the 12 Minor Prophets) to have a biblical book named for him. Born in Tekoa in Judah, he was a shepherd. According to the book of Amos, he traveled to the richer and more powerful northern kingdom of Israel to preach his visions of divine destruction and the message that God's absolute sovereignty required justice for rich and poor alike and that God's chosen people were not exempt from the moral order. He foretold the destruction of the northern kingdom and Judah and anticipated the predictions of doom by later biblical prophets.

15 Paul Bunyan—A giant lumberjack who performs superhuman acts in American folklore. A symbol of strength and vitality, he is accompanied by a giant blue ox, Babe. He was credited with creating Puget Sound, digging the Grand Canyon, and building the Black Hills, and was known for his prodigious appetite, eating hotcakes off a griddle so large it was greased by men using sides of bacon as skates. Tales of his exploits probably originated in lumber camps, and were first published by James MacGillivray in "The Round River Drive" (1910), which soon led to a national myth.

16 The American journalist Ralph Emerson McGill (1898-1969) was the 1959 Pulitzer prize winner for his editorials on race, desegregation, and Southern politics—views that made him and the "Atlanta Constitution" major symbols of Southern liberalism; The Southern writer Lillian Eugenia Smith (1897-1966) was recognized as a passionate critic of white supremacy and segregation. Her main concern was that the traditional pattern of race relations, which she knew intimately from her own experience growing up in Florida and Georgia, was harmful to the humanity of both whites and African Americans; Harry Golden, Southern Jew, publisher of the the Carolina Israelite espoused liberal social and political views, most controversially on racial integration and labor, in an area where these issues were explosive; James McBride Dabbs (1896 1970), the farmer-writer from Sumter County who became one of his region's and the nation's most eloquent spokesmen for social justice and racial equity. He was the author of four major books on the identity, history and culture of the South: The Southern Heritage (1958), The Road Home (1960), Who Speaks for the South? (1964) and Haunted by God (1972); Anne McCarty Braden (1924-2006) was one of the leading white advocates of racial equality in the 20th-century United States. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in rigidly-segregated Anniston, Alabama, Braden grew up in a middle class family that accepted southern racial mores whole-heartedly. A devout Episcopalian, Braden was bothered by racial segregation, but never questioned it until her college years at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia. After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, she returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for the Louisville Times. There, she met and in 1948 married fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. She became a supporter of the African American freedom movement at a time when very few southern whites did; Sarah Patton Boyle described her experiences as a white Southern woman coming to understand the problems of many black Americans in her book The Desegregated Heart (1962).

16 Interposition implied that the states have a right to interpose their authority to protect their citizens from the unconstitutional measures of the federal government. In 1798 Virginia proposed interposition to resist the Sedition Act. In the 1830s South Carolina asserted its rights to nullify a federal tariff but backed down when threatened with military force by President Andrew Jackson. Later Senator John C. Calhoun argued for interposition to prevent the delivery of mail in the South containing abolitionist propaganda. In the 1850s many Northerners urged interposition, in the form of personal liberty laws and court actions, to prevent enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (see Fugitive Slaves). In 1854 the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the 1850 law unconstitutional and released the abolitionist Sherman Booth from federal custody. In overturning this decision, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney declared, in *Ableman v. Booth (1859), that such “propositions are new in the jurisprudence of the United States” and that the Supreme Court had the final authority to interpret the meaning of the Constitution (p. 514). Secession was the most dramatic form of interposition, and it was met with an equally dramatic and forceful response by President Abraham Lincoln. After Brown v. Board of Education (1954), some southern states fought school desegregation with “massive resistance,” a form of interposition. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), which involved the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, the federal courts cited Ableman v. Booth to reaffirm the principle that the Supreme Court had final authority to interpret the meaning of the Constitution. Interposition is now a relic of constitutional theory that died in the Civil War but was briefly and futilely resurrected in the 1950s and 1960s by diehard segregationists.

Governer Ross Barnett (1898-1988), governor of Mississippi, opposed James Meredith's admission to the University of Mississippi. See his response to interposition as he speaks to Robert Kennedy in 1962: "More funding for nosy government agencies, more racial bean counting, the installation of racial commisars in hospitals. Finally, race and identity politics will be able to do to American health care what it has done to the humanities in higher education. Hell yeah, good buddy. And maybe we can turn back the ol' clock to where it oughta be and git those gol-blamed federal troops out of Little Rock, Arkansas and Oxford, Mississippi, too. Just look what 'they' did to ed-u-cashun . . . the states were a doin' a good job with schools until then, just like they were a doin' a good job with the hospitals, and still are, fer my money's worth. And mebbe we can get those nosy Hoover boys and Justice Department fellas to kinda look the other way when it comes to separate (but equal!) drinkin' fountains. Do we really need 'racial commisars' or racial commies or whatever the hell you said there, fer damn drinkin' fountains or even votin' booths, fer chrissakes? Must it be over one little boy—backed by communist front—backed by the NAACP which is a communist front? . . . I'm going to treat you with every courtesy but I won't agree to let that boy to get to Ole Miss . . . . That's what it's going to boil down to—whether Mississippi can run its institutions or the federal goernment is going to run things . . . " (Mississippi Governer Ross Barnett to Robert Kennedy, September 25, 1962).

17 George Wallace was one of America's most outspoken supporters of racial segregation in the 1960s. As governor of Alabama he fought integration, once even standing symbolically in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block two black students from enrolling there. (Many considered Wallace the leader of the opposition to Martin Luther King, Jr.) Wallace served four terms as governor of Alabama: 1963-67, 1971-79 (two terms), and 1983-87. He served the later terms in a wheelchair after being paralyzed below the waist in a 1972 assassination attempt by gunman Arthur Bremer. Wallace ran for president of the United States four times, in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976. In the 1980s he recanted his earlier racial views and sought reconciliation with black leaders.

18 James Meredith—fiercely independent and keenly intelligent, James Meredith was the great iconoclast of the civil rights movement. As the first black to attend the University of Mississippi, Meredith scored one of the earliest important victories against segregation in Mississippi. At the same time, he remained largely aloof from the established civil rights organizations. Medgar Evers and the NAACP helped Meredith win his legal battle to integrate Ole Miss, but as Meredith proudly noted, "Nobody hand picked me. I made the decision myself. I paid my own tuition."

_______________________

King vocabulary

provincial—Of or characteristic of people from the provinces; not fashionable or sophisticated: “Well-educated professional women . . . made me feel uncomfortably provincial” (J.R. Salamanca); Limited in perspective; narrow and self-centered.

"Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea" (1-2).

gainsay—To declare false; deny.

"There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community" (2).

harry—To disturb or distress by or as if by repeated attacks; harass.

"[W]hen you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro [ . . . ]" (4).

paternalism—an attitude or a policy stemming from the hierarchic pattern of a family based on patriarchy, that is, there is a figurehead (the father, pater in Latin) that makes decisions on behalf of others (the "children") for their own good, even if this is contrary to their wishes. It is implied that the fatherly figure is wiser than and acts in the best interest of its protected figures. The term may be used derogatorily to characterize attitudes or political systems that are thought to deprive individuals of freedom and responsibility, only nominally serving their interests, while in fact pursuing another agenda.

"who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom" (5).

elegy—A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person; A composition that is melancholy or pensive in tone.

"Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood" (6).

incorrigible—Incapable of being corrected or reformed: an incorrigible criminal; Firmly rooted; ineradicable: incorrigible faults; Difficult or impossible to control or manage: an incorrigible, spoiled child.

"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'" (7).

Zeitgeist—The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation: “It's easy to see how a student . . . in the 1940's could imbibe such notions. The Zeitgeist encouraged Philosopher-Kings” (James Atlas).

"Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice" (7).

mores—The accepted traditional customs and usages of a particular social group; Moral attitudes; Manners; ways.

In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

sanction—Authoritative permission or approval that makes a course of action valid; Support or encouragement, as from public opinion or established custom.

"Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are" (9).

ekklesia—a word meaning "gathering of the called out ones" (or in today's terms "church").

"Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world" (9).

Jeremiad—A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom.

Categorical imperative—In the ethical system of Immanuel Kant, an unconditional moral law that applies to all rational beings and is independent of any personal motive or desire.

Ex. of one of King's imperatives: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."