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Martin Luther King Jr’s response

Letter from Birmingham Jail – In Martin Luther King Jr’s response to a group of church workers discussing their disappointment in the actions that King has taken to ensure his purpose is made known, King says these words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” in paragraph four of his response. King understood how destructively cause and effect could work.

Not only did he understand this, but he also noticed that those forces could become constructive if expressed in reverse. Meaning,

if action is taken to provide all with justice and fair treatment, it is only a matter of time before a vast majority of injustices are swept away completely. Martin Luther King also had a good understanding of the sinful nature of human beings and the lack of fairness from time to time. This is not the fault of anyone in particular, but sinful human nature is to blame.

For upon Injustice can act as a domino effect. This line of dominos starts all the way back to how a single individual was raised and developed. If the said individual has been raised with a twisted understanding of the value of all people, no matter the pigmentation of their skin, they will continue to believe those things.

These people join with one another and together raise the public to see people of color as “inferior” to themselves. This continues to spiral out of control until all people are on the same page, or someone halts their progress.

That is what King sought to do, and along with his own group, may have slowed them considerably. King knew things would continue to get worse unless someone rose and challenged the oppressors. He knew the consequences, but for the sake of millions of colored American people, he fought back.

I find the quote mentioned at the beginning very compelling. My reason is the obviousness of the effect.

Today we see displeasing and unjust things being done, and yet, people are still responding with positivity toward the disturbing issue because of the acceptive response of their peers. Take abortion for example.

This heinous crime takes place every single day and people just accept the fact that innocent lives are being destroyed. Countless numbers of pieces of evidence showing the lives of unborn children have been found and shown to multitudes, and still, this act is completely acceptable to many in our nation today. This injustice has spread across America and people are becoming desensitized to the lives others are signing away. This shows the effect a single injustice can have on the entirety of a nation.

The article was originally published here.

Letter from Birmingham Jail | Quotes

1.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King responds to the accusation that he’s an outsider by asserting an action against one person has an indirect effect on others. If people’s rights are impeded in Birmingham, that will ultimately affect King, who lives in Atlanta. Therefore it is his duty and right to call for change anywhere in the world, not just in his hometown.

2.

I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’


Martin Luther King Jr.

Tension is usually thought of as being a bad thing, but King states there are actually two kinds of tension: violent tension, which is bad, and nonviolent tension, which is “necessary for growth.” He supports the use of the latter, which he feels will help people look past the “myths and half-truths” and come up with viable solutions to the problem of racial inequality.

3.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King’s critics argue this isn’t the right time for massive social upheaval. King counters those who do the oppressing will never think there’s a right time because they like the way things are. It is up to the people who are hurt the most by repressive policies to take charge of their own situation. King is speaking specifically to black Americans who insist the federal courts and legislative system will right the wrongs of the status quo. He doesn’t want them to wait for change—he wants them to demand it.

4.

Justice too long delayed is justice denied.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King is quoting someone else’s words when he says this, but it isn’t clear who. He refers to the original speaker as “the distinguished jurist of yesterday,” which could be any number of judges or attorneys. A Louisiana attorney practicing in the 1840s used the phrase in an article he authored for the Louisiana Law Review. The phrase seems to have its origins in a proverb dating from the 17th century. King uses the phrase to reference the length of time African Americans have been waiting for basic rights. Rights that are promised for the future mean little to people who need them now.

5.

A just law is a man-made code that squares with moral law.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King says there are two kinds of laws: those that are just and those that are unjust. Just laws align with the natural laws of God and should be followed. Unjust laws are immoral and therefore needn’t be followed.

6.

Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King is annoyed by whites who say they are in favor of civil rights yet object to how activists try to obtain them. He feels this hampers the fight for racial equality more than hate speech by white supremacist groups.

7.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King uses an analogy about a robber and the persons robbed to denounce the clergymen’s hypocrisy and their use of victim-blaming—as they intimidate or shame those seeking their constitutional rights. According to King the complaint about peaceful protests “[precipitating] violence” is akin to blaming a robbery victim because he had money to steal. King alleges the white legislative bodies and their supporters are robbers who have stolen many African Americans’ civil rights.

8.

I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King was aware he didn’t represent every black voice when it came to the subject of civil rights. On one end of the spectrum were African Americans who didn’t want change—people who had been beaten down by the system and felt they deserved to be treated as second-class citizens, as well as the few educated and wealthy blacks who benefited from segregation. On the other side were the pro-black militants, like those in Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement who were perfectly willing to use violence to gain their end of a separate and equal culture. King’s moderate stance put him somewhere in the middle. He wanted equal rights, but he also wanted African Americans to be part of the culture to which they rightfully belonged.

9.

I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King was initially hesitant to be labeled an extremist because of the word’s negative connotation, which was often associated with black nationalist groups that sometimes condoned violence. King’s acceptance of the label coincides with his redefinition of what it means to be “extreme.” He presents extremism as being a desirable quality found in the greatest thinkers and leaders of Western culture, which not only turns the clergy’s label into a term of praise but also positions him alongside individuals who successfully changed the way people see the world. He elevates his own position by accepting a label he once found disappointing.

10.

Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King’s admission that he “expected too much” from white moderates refers not to his failings but theirs. He thinks people who have even a marginal grasp of the unjustness of segregation would understand the need for ending it as soon as possible. When white moderates do not understand this need, their lack of comprehension reinforces King’s view that few of the “oppressor race” see that injustice “must be rooted out by … determined action.”

11.

The judgment of God is upon the church as never before.


Martin Luther King Jr.

This is about as close to a threat as King gets in his letter to the Alabama clergymen who condemned his actions. King believes the Christian Church’s acceptance of segregation is entirely un-Christian as it violates the basic morality inherent in the teachings of Christ. Because of this, he argues, people will lose faith in the Church—making it and the people who run it obsolete.

12.

I can’t join you in your praise for the police department.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King’s tone of polite dissent veers into sarcasm and near bitterness toward the end of his letter. He has a lot of feelings about the clergymen’s praise for Birmingham law enforcement, which has a long history of mistreating blacks. He is appalled the clergymen think this sort of behavior is acceptable, much less something to be lauded.

13.

It is just as wrong … to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.


Martin Luther King Jr.

King is again speaking about the Birmingham police force. He acknowledges “[the police] have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators” but argues that good behavior on their part doesn’t justify the continued enforcement of segregation.

14.

They were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream.


Martin Luther King Jr.

The “American dream” of which King writes is the deep-rooted idea that anyone, no matter their social or financial standing, can create a comfortable and fulfilling life for themselves with hard work and determination. He believes future generations will view the civil rights activists of the 1960s as heroes who fought for equality for all Americans. Decades after the peak of the civil rights movement, his prediction appears in large part to having come true.

15.

I’m afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time.


Martin Luther King Jr.

The problem with written text is that it’s often hard to discern the author’s intended tone. This sentence could be interpreted as a sincere apology about the length of King’s letter, or it could be read as a not-so-gentle swipe at the eight white clergymen who wrote the document to which King is responding. It is likely the latter, as King goes on to mention the uncomfortable conditions of his incarceration. This one sentence casts the eight clergymen as self-important grandstanders while King is depicted as a rebel willing to suffer for his cause.

The article was originally published here.

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Letter from the Birmingham Jail Quote

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Letter from the Birmingham Jail Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.
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Letter from the Birmingham Jail Quotes Showing 1-24 of 24
“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: freedom, oppression
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“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 Councilor 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 goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: justice, liberals, privilege, race
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“In a real sense, all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…
This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation
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“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: civil-disobedience
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“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. ”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“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, 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 majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles o popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being ‘disturbers of the peace and ‘outside agitators.’ But they went on with the conviction that they were a ‘colony of heaven’ and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: change, hope, ignorance, prejudice, racism
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: nonviolence
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“Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. Anyone who lives inside the US can never be considered an outsider anywhere in the country”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Tags: America, freedom, justice, racism
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: race-and-racism-in-America
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“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.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: civil rights, justice, liberty, waiting-for-justice
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“More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: civil-rights
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“All too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: Christianity, church, religious
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“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 Councilor 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 goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice ― or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
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“My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is a 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 has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: civil-rights-movement, morality, oppression
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“I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much much more effectively than the people of goodwill.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
tags: civil-rights, justice
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“Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail

The article was originally published here.

Letter from Birmingham Jail Quotes

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The article was originally published here.

Letter From Birmingham Jail Quotes and Analysis

“My Dear Fellow Clergymen:”
Dr. King, p. 169

Dr. King’s tone as he begins his letter is remarkably restrained. Considering the context – he was in solitary confinement when he learned that Birmingham clergymen had together issued a statement criticizing him and praising the city’s bigoted police force – he had every reason to make his letter a rant. And yet this address announces his purpose loud and clear: he aims not to attack but to explain. Rather than indicate what separates him from the other clergy, he calls them “fellow clergymen,” underlining one of the letter’s main themes: brotherhood. Of course, there is no shortage of passive-aggressive attacks and criticism throughout the letter, but the tone remains polite, deferential, at times almost apologetic, creating a friendly and ironic tone. This marvelous collection of attributes is present from these very first words.

 
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Dr. King, p. 170

This phrase, one of the letter’s most famous, serves several purposes. In its immediate context, it justifies why Dr. King and the SCLC have come to Birmingham; because they feel connected to and responsible for everyone, they had to come to a place that was exhibiting “injustice.” And yet the phrase also serves as a stipulation to justify many of the more controversial claims he later makes. Throughout the work, he justifies breaking laws if they are unjust, embracing extremism, and forgoing negotiations if they are not made in good faith. Because Dr. King establishes this philosophical groundwork so early on, he has unimpeachable justifications for those later claims. That is, if indeed injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere, then it follows that a man interested in justice must endeavor to stop it, not just for the sake of his immediate community, but for the good of all mankind.

 
“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, 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.”
Dr. King, p. 172

Throughout the “Letter,” Dr. King is careful to measure his tone, to avoid validating any knee-jerk anxieties that his audience might feel. And yet he does not carry this restraint to the point of apologizing for encouraging tension. Instead, he embraces and justifies the importance of tension. The allusion to Socrates is important since Western civilization treats the Greek thinker as an archetype of wisdom. In truth, King is concocting a syllogism – if Socrates is good, and Socrates was right to create tension so that the mind could grow, then tension is good for inspiring mankind to grow. He is careful to stress that the tension he supports is “nonviolent,” but he does not make his intentions unclear. Similarly, the passage slyly integrates the stakes of inaction into its construction. In its final lines, Dr. King implies that proceeding without tension is going to leave man in “the dark depths of prejudice and racism.” It is a passive, implicit warning that addressing segregation without tension would be not only ineffective but dangerous.

 
“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.”
Dr. King, p. 173

About mid-way through the “Letter,” Dr. King declares his primary antagonist as the white moderate. Though this passage comes earlier than the explicit discussion of the white moderate, it is one of the clearest articulations of the accusation he makes against them. He directly accuses moderates of disingenuousness when they preach patience, in effect calling them liars – they say ‘wait’ but mean ‘never.’ Worse, he suggests that they lie without even realizing it. If they are not pernicious, then they are ignorant of themselves. The larger implication of this assertion is that moderation and patience must be replaced with action and impatience. To delay justice is to be cowardly and unjust. Thus, the clergymen – and the white moderate society that they represent – should not only celebrate Dr. King’s attempt to bring about justice but join in the crusade.

 
“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal 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…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.”
Dr. King, pp. 174-175

Dr. King has an impressive ability to veer between logos (appeal to logic) and pathos (appeal to emotion), sometimes within the same argument. This excerpt is from his defense against charges of hypocrisy, which argued that he encouraged people to follow the laws that benefit him while breaking laws that do not. His logos throughout this passage clearly dismisses such a charge as simplistic. Taking for granted that his audience accepts the validity of Christian morality, he insists that one should apply this sense of morality towards the world’s complications. And yet even within this logical argument is an implicit use of pathos, as he implicitly asks the question ‘would you really want to support a law that “distorts the soul?”’ Dr. King’s argument empowers the individual to be conscientious of injustice in the world, and to let that be his guide, rather than relying on socially dictated truisms like ‘the law is the law.’

 
“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.”
Dr. King, p. 176

Here, Dr. King describes what happens when one relies on a law that exempts itself from moral responsibility. On several occasions in the “Letter,” he chides the clergy for representing a church that is separate from social, ‘real-world’ concerns. His argument here is that allowing a law to reign supreme without assessing its moral quality produces a situation like that of Nazi Germany. His attack here on the clergy – who seem to support ‘law and order’ without considering the repressive segregation that comes with such order – is not very subtle, comparing them to Nazis who persecuted Jews simply because their prejudices were protected by the law. What the passage does is distinguish between conformity and individual responsibility. The latter, he argues, allows for action that can change the world. By suggesting that he would have broken Nazi laws because they were unjust, he challenges his audience to do the same with segregation laws.

 
“Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of the ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but 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.”
Dr. King, p. 178

This passage is a rather concise description of the call to arms that lies within the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Arguing that time is “neutral,” Dr. King illustrates the importance of individual action. Individuals must actively seek to create the world they want since there is no inevitable sense of fate that will deliver it. By suggesting that “people of ill will” have understood this idea, he offers an implicit warning to his audience: if you do not support those of us seeking to do good, only bad will happen. It is a marvelous mixture of logos and pathos. He stipulates through pathos that good men want “a solid rock of human dignity,” and then argues that direct action – like that of the SCLC – is the only way to reach such a transcendent state.

 
“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?”
Dr. King, p. 179

During the first half of the “Letter,” Dr. King’s arguments are marked more by their restraint than by their fire. Showing a prudent and effective sensitivity to his audience’s fears – that angry black man are extremists who seek to destroy – he frequently takes time to define his terms before admitting to them. An early example is his discussion and defense of “tension.” However, here he shows a much greater eagerness to accept a mantle, regardless of his audience’s response. Of course, this is overstating it somewhat, since he does define and contextualize the concept of ‘extremism’ immediately before this passage, but there is nevertheless a self-satisfaction with his position here. He makes no qualms at implicitly comparing himself with Jesus (and other figures that follow), and uses an unimpeachable sentiment (“love your enemies…”) to justify his ground. He challenges his audience to disagree with the grounds on which he gladly calls himself an extremist and plans to remake the world for justice. The extension is that if their most hated concept – extremism – is not necessarily bad, then they ought to reexamine their various attitudes and perceptions.

 
“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.”
Dr. King, p. 183

Keeping with the more confrontational tone of the letter’s second half, Dr. King launches into an attack on the complacency of the contemporary church. Preceding this passage, he explains his disappointment, arguing that the church merely validates an unjust status quo, rather than being a force for social change and human betterment, an active part of the struggle for man’s dignity in a cruel world. Here, he presents the stakes of such cowardice: the church will become “irrelevant.” His language is unequivocally harsh, likening the church to a “social club” without “authenticity.” The sense of “outright disgust” is attributed to “young people,” but is arguably Dr. King’s own. Whereas most of the “Letter” operates through sleight of hand logical arguments or naked pathos, this section is unusually harsh and direct, ultimately suggesting that Dr. King is now prepared to admit that while he would like the support of his audience, he and his brothers and sisters will persevere and succeed even without it.

 
“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.”
Dr. King, pp. 181-182

By the end of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King has progressed from what professor Jonathan Rieder calls a “Diplomat” to a “Prophet.” This clear declaration of self-sufficiency reflects his ultimate sentiment: while he would like the support of his audience, he and his brothers and sisters will persevere and succeed even without it. He establishes this by referring to the greatest indignity in black American history – slavery – and yet owning that period with optimism, as an indication that the black man will triumph over any adversity. What gives them such exceptional power is that they operate with the protection of both the secular (“the sacred heritage of our nation”) and the divine (“the eternal will of God.”) Echoing his earlier arguments that the law and morality cannot be considered as independent concepts, he insists that he will triumph because he believes in justice, and implicitly warns those who do not join him that they are cowardly, promoting injustice instead. In other words, they should join his cause not only for his sake but for their own.

The article was originally published here.

Editor’s Note: Read The Atlantic’s special coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.
Images above: King is ready for a mug shot (left) in Montgomery, Alabama, after his 1956 arrest while protesting the segregation of the city’s buses. His leadership of the successful 381-day bus boycott brought him to national attention. Right: In 1967, King serves out the sentence from his arrest four years earlier in Birmingham, Alabama.

In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.

This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for “constructive, nonviolent tension” to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.

The Atlantic published it in the August 1963 issue, under the headline “The Negro Is Your Brother.”

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 affiliated 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 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 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. Unfortunately, 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: a 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. Based on 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. Based on these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth 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.

“Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”

Then it occurred to us that the March election [for Birmingham’s mayor] was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Connor [the commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor] was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration 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 tension that a community that 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, 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 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 the 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 in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is a 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 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 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; 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-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you 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 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 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: 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, 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 has 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.

King has a heavyweight in his corner after he is jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1967. (Mario Tama / Getty)

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or powerful majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is a 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. 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 with having an ordinance that 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 can 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 to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the 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, 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 Citizens’ Councilor 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 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 to establish 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 about 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 you may be 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 the ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but 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 coworkers 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 “somebodies” 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. 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 to 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 all men are created equal …” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill, three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
 A 1964 attempt to integrate a motel restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida, lands King in county jail. (Bettmann / Getty)

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 all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some—such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Anne Braden, and Sarah Patton Boyle—have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with 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 nonsegregated 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.

 

Despite 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 otherworldly 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 Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative 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? I 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 arch defender 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.
 King’s fingerprints, taken on June 11, 1964, upon his arrest in St. Augustine, Florida. (Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center)
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.
 The police have indeed exercised a degree of 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 Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of non-violence 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 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 feet are 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’s sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were, in reality, standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers? 

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.


This article appears in the special MLK issue print edition with the headline “Letter From Birmingham Jail” and was published in the August 1963 Atlantic as “The Negro Is Your Brother.“ © 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., © renewed 1991 Coretta Scott King. All works by Martin Luther King Jr. have been reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., care of Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, New York.

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Quotes

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.

Contrary to what the white churchmen King addresses appear to believe, the struggle for civil rights is not simply a legal cause: it is also a moral crusade. While the clergymen condemn King and his supporters for their willingness to break laws, King argues that if justice would prevail, it is sometimes necessary to disobey immoral laws, such as in the case of the laws that enforce segregation. King is attacking the white churchmen’s narrow legal interpretation of the civil rights issue; he wants them, as Christians, to acknowledge that they have an obligation to a higher law—the moral law of God—and that any law out of line with it should be disobeyed. In this allusion to an Old Testament story, King calls upon the churchmen’s sense of religious duty: surely they wouldn’t condemn Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego for their civil disobedience. Thus, sometimes existing laws must be disobeyed in obedience to higher laws.

It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

In this passage, King calls Christians to take a leading role in society once more. Instead of merely reacting to events and obeying the law for obedience’s sake, as they do now, they should be shaping society. In the early days of the Church, Christians actively challenged the prevailing power structure, as they were secure in the conviction that they were doing the Lord’s work.

Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

Instead of leading the struggle against segregation, the Church preaches compliance with…

(The entire section is 649 words.)

Letter from Birmingham City Jail Homework Help Questions

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A U G U S T 1 9 6 3

Letter from Birmingham Jail

by Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned as a participant in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in longhand the letter which follows. It was his response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College; attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, one of six black pupils among a hundred students, and the president of his class; and won a fellowship to Boston University for his Ph.D.
WHILE confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible, we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here.

Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

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

You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.
IN ANY nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: a collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. Based on them, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions, certain promises were made by the merchants, such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. Based on these promises, Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration. As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences of the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We
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started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” and “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?” We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes. Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff.

This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this, we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask, “Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, “Why didn’t you give the new administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

Letter From Birmingham Jail 3
YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

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

Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is a difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama, all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote, although the Negroes constitute a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically structured?

These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance that requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws.
I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

In your statement, you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn’t this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
Letter From Birmingham Jail 4

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of the ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time, itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.
YOU spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first, I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodies” that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable devil. I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest. I’m grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble-rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, “Get rid of your discontent.” But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now, this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.

But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? — “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? — “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? — “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist? — “Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God.” Was not John Bunyan an extremist? — “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a mockery of my conscience.” Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? — “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some, like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs, have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They sat in with us at lunch counters and rode in with us on the freedom rides. They have languished in filthy roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of angry policemen who see them as “dirty nigger lovers.” They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Letter From Birmingham Jail 5
LET me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand this past Sunday in welcoming Negroes to your Baptist Church worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Springhill College several years ago.

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

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

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

I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular.

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But they went on with the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven” and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.

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

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

I must close now. But before closing, I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I don’t believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don’t believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions, refusing to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department.
Letter From Birmingham Jail 6

They have indeed been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense, they have been publicly “nonviolent.” But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years, I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity, “My feet are tired, but my soul is rested.” They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel, and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’s sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were, in reality, standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Never before have I written a letter this long — or should I say a book? I’m afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than writing long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

The article was originally published here.

5 Quotes from MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

It would be a difficult task to find someone who has had more influence than Martin Luther King in initiating change within our nation. For the past few years, on Martin Luther King weekend, I have decided to read, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” arguably his most famous written works. The letter was penned in response to criticism he received from eight white clergymen who released a public statement denouncing King’s peaceful resistance entitled, “A Call for Unity” in which they denounced King’s efforts arguing that the Civil Rights Movement should be fought in the courtroom.

The letter is a beautiful and well-articulated argument toward non-violent protest in the face of injustice. I am always particularly moved toward the end of the letter by King’s indictment of a church sitting idly by as freedom is assaulted. Unfortunately, his words seem as relevant today as they did when the letter was first written.

Below, in bold, I have pulled 5 quotes I find to be both challenging and moving. Beneath each quote is the entire paragraph from which they were pulled. If you haven’t read the letter in its’ entirety, you certainly should and can find it by clicking the button below…


 “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“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.”

“Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. “

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

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”

“I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of the ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”

“…all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”

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

“But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

“I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department. Letter From Birmingham Jail. They have indeed been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense, they have been publicly “nonviolent.” But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years, I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

The article was originally published here.

In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” what is the meaning of the quote “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”?

Expert Answers info

D. Reynolds | Certified Educator

In the paragraph preceding the one in which this quote appears, King mentions that, like the Biblical apostle Paul, he feels compelled to go wherever there is a need for his help. He then states that all people in the United States are tied together in a web of mutuality in which injustice in one place threatens justice anywhere.

This means that once people of ill intent see a group get away with injustice in one part of the country, they are emboldened to try it somewhere else. The more locations in which people, for whatever reason, get away with further injustice, the more easily it can spread. It can even start to seem normative.

Although he keeps his focus on the United States and doesn’t specifically quote John Donne, Donne’s words echo behind what King says. Donne too was a clergyman and is a famous meditation, he noted that we, as human beings, are all interconnected. When a bell tolls to communicate that someone has died, it affects all of us, even if we didn’t know the person, because all people contribute their gifts to the world.

King wants his audience of mostly white pastors sitting on the sidelines of the Civil Rights struggles to understand that blacks, even in a faraway place, are an important part of the fabric of American life. He is urging them to join in the struggle, saying it is about them too.

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Westwood | Certified Educator

Dr. King’s letter was composed as he sat in a Birmingham jail because a court had previously ordered that King was prohibited from staging protests in Birmingham, Alabama.

In his letter that he has composed while sitting in jail, Dr. King argues that since Alabama is a state just like Georgia, there is “an inescapable network of mutuality.” In other words, if there were injustice in Atlanta where a civil rights demonstration was held, why…

(The entire section contains 3 answers and 638 words.)

Further Reading:

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pohnpei397 | Certified Educator

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The article was originally published here.

Letter from Birmingham Jail: Main Idea

We Should Resist Injustice Everywhere with Non-Violent Disobedience

In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King says that we’re all responsible for justice across the nation—and around the world. Justice isn’t defined or contained by mere laws. After all, laws are basically just words written by human beings. When dumb, unjust laws get written and people suffer as a result, it’s necessary to protest those laws by deliberately and non-violently breaking them, even if the resulting unrest and “social tension” is inconvenient for some folks. The time is always now for justice, and there’s no good reason to wait for the right thing to be done by someone else. We always have to do it ourselves.

Tl;dr: Get off your butts and march for freedom, people.

Questions

  1. What’s the deal with all this anti-outsider rhetoric? Why did the white clergymen criticize MLK and the other demonstrators for coming from outside the community? Does “outsider” stand for something else?
  2. What would Jesus have done in the ’60s? Would he have marched with Dr. King? Is racial justice implied by the fundamental teachings of Christianity, as King suggested to the guys to who he was writing?
  3. Who’s King’s real audience for this letter? Is it the white clergymen who protested his protests? Others?
  4. Does the fact that King wrote the letter while sitting in jail make it more effective?

Chew On This

Non-violent civil disobedience is the best way to change our world; FYI, for everybody, violence doesn’t work.

“Letter From Birmingham Jail” wouldn’t be remembered today if it hadn’t been written from a jail cell. (“Letter From the Comfort of My Atlanta Office” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it).

Quotes

Quote #1

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. (4)

The logic of this quote can be extended to any community, however large or small, including the world community. Dr. King was a proud American, but the underpinning of his major ideas was a spiritual world-vision. The real question is what kind of garment are we tied in? A shirt? A blouse? Pantaloons? He doesn’t say.

Quote #2

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. (11)

Even though Dr. King is widely considered an idealist, he wasn’t a dewy-eyed dreamer. Quotes like this one show how realistic he actually was. If you ask us, seeing MLK’s dreams in the full context of an unforgiving world, a history of oppression and slavery, and the centuries-long struggle for justice makes them even more poignant and beautiful [cue inspirational music].

Quote #3

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. (16)

This is like intellectual judo, where Dr. King uses his opponents’ appeal to “law and order” against them, by arguing that it is in fact he who has the greatest respect for the law because he wants it to get closer and closer to the ideal and perfect form of justice. MLK was the Kyuzo Mifune of political and theological argument (obscure reference, we know).

Quote #4

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 (20).

Classic Dr. King. He uses a vivid and down-to-earth metaphor as the fulcrum of his argument: racial injustice in the South is like a hidden boil, a gross, festering sore that has to be acknowledged and examined to be cured. Blech, get it off.

Quote #5

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 (21).

It’s comforting to think of Progress as some great historical machine that keeps improving itself, going faster all the time, making life better and better without any of us having to do anything. It’s also comforting to think of pizza and chocolate as the foundation of a healthy diet that will help us live to be two hundred years old. Unfortunately, neither of these things is true, and we have to get off our tushes (in both scenarios).

The article was originally published here.

Systemic racism throughout the American South is at the heart of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter, written in response to criticism of his nonviolent civil rights protest in Birmingham, Alabama. King writes his letter from jail, as he and other African Americans have been arrested for protesting the segregation policies and overt racism in Birmingham; those protests violated an injunction on parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing, and picketing. He gives ample context for the protests he is leading, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, arguing that the city’s “white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” King establishes beyond a shadow of a doubt that the protests are a necessary response to the city’s racist policies, as well as the only way to engage whites in substantive negotiations.

While racism and the policy of segregation were widespread throughout the South at this point in history, King calls Birmingham “the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States,” giving concrete examples of the need to protest and bring national attention to their desegregationist cause. King establishes an exhaustive list of the burdens African Americans face on a national scale, and the detrimental effects those policies and actions have on mental health. He evokes images of physical violence such as lynchings and drownings, but also the economic violence of long-standing poverty, and the emotional toll of having to explain to his young children why they are treated as second-class citizens in their own country.

He goes on to point out Birmingham’s record of police brutality towards African Americans, their unjust treatment in the courts, and the “unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches” as just some examples of the deeply entrenched racism in the city. He also points to negotiations with economic leaders in Birmingham earlier in the year, in which local merchants promised to remove “humiliating racial signs,” only to break the promise and ignore the requests of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Some critics wondered why King did not give Birmingham’s new mayor, Albert Boutwell, time to make a good-faith effort at reducing segregation and racism in the city. In response, King explains that Boutwell is a segregationist like his predecessors, and will not be moved to change without intense pressure from African Americans and other desegregationists.

King also makes it clear in his letter that he believes discussion is not enough, and that he and his fellow protesters intend to create constructive tension to generate change. He laments the fact that negotiation is impossible within a system that is dedicated to “monologue rather than dialogue,” in which African American voices have been silenced by the dominant, white powers of society. King then portrays himself and his fellow protesters as gadflies, who will create the necessary tension in society to provoke real, thoughtful dialogue between blacks and whites.

It is this tension that concerns his critics, but he defends the idea resolutely, arguing that while he opposes violence, the nonviolent tension he is advocating is necessary for the growth and development of American society. Finally, King points out that historically, “privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.” It is only through nonviolent pressure and clear and persistent demands that African Americans will make any gains in their civil rights.

King describes the protests as inevitable at this point in history. African Americans have waited long enough for racial justice to come to them, and are now willing to go out in search of it. “Let him march,” he implores, referring to the gatherings and protests in Birmingham, “and try to understand why he must do so.” With this request, King humanizes his fellow protesters and reminds his critics of the painful effects of historic racism.

King also warns his critics that the most likely consequence of ignoring the needs of these nonviolent protesters is that they will turn to violence; he notes that this is not a threat, but a fact rooted in the history of oppression. He argues that frustration may drive many blacks to join black nationalist movements such as the Nation of Islam, which he describes as mired in “hatred and despair” rather than a constructive drive towards racial equality. Finally, King places this movement within the larger context of American history, reminding his critics that African Americans have endured even greater injustice under slavery and emerged unbroken. He proclaims that if “the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.”

In “A Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. provides a comprehensive evaluation of the deeply entrenched racism in America. He establishes how blacks have been degraded and dehumanized by segregation and racism in general and then combats that dehumanization with several personal notes on the effects of racism on the African American psyche. Most importantly, he establishes the moral imperative to act now, in a nonviolent fashion, as the only way to bring about change.

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In the famous 1963 gave his most well-known defense of civil disobedience. King wrote the letter in response to a statement published by a group of white Alabama clergymen, “A Call for Unity,” which expressed some sympathy for those who were demonstrating against segregation but criticized their methods of protesting. This sort of critique has never stopped being aimed at activists and remains common today — so Martin Luther King Day seems an appropriate occasion to revisit the powerful words King wrote on the subject in jail.

In the letter, King uses the term “direct action” to describe the sit-ins, marches, and various demonstrations he and others were engaging in to draw attention to racial injustice. The King Center as “the strategic use of nonviolent tactics and methods to bring an opponent or oppressive party into dialogue to resolve an unjust situation. It is used as a moral force to illustrate, document, and counter injustices.”

 

It’s a method that continues to be used today by Black Lives Matter activists and others who protest the United States’ persistent institutional racism.

Here are some passages from King’s letter that parse out direct action and why it’s such an effective activist method.

“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.”

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Whether it’s the fact that the disenfranchisement of black voters in many places around the country or the fact that the national is fueled by a diffused structure of local policing, surveillance, and profiling, this quote is as relevant as ever.

“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. … unfortunately, 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.”

Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Letter from Birmingham JailThe 2014 death of unarmed young black man Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer sparked huge protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Some of the demonstrations turned into arson and vandalism, causing onlookers across the country to — a loaded term that’s often — and endlessly disparage those who were engaging in violence as opposed to focusing on the reasons for the unrest.

Many have since argued that these protests in Ferguson forced the United States to address the issue of police brutality and .

“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.”

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images

Beyoncé made waves with her 2016 halftime show to the song “Formation,” which referenced Hurricane Katrina, the Black Panthers, and the Black Power Movement. She received criticism for choosing the Super Bowl as a platform to promote that message, which was called divisive.

“This is football, not Hollywood,” after. “You’re talking to middle America when you have the Super Bowl, so if you have entertainment, let’s have decent, wholesome entertainment.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail”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.”

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images

Colin Kaepernick was slammed by many for not protesting in the “right” way. that there are “other ways to get your point across,” and that Kaepernick “went about it the wrong way.”Letter from Birmingham Jail

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. … Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘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.”

Patience is still constantly demanded of activists. They’re told to wait for change, as opposed to fighting for justice with methods that the privileged find unpalatable.

Big ideas for radical change are often rejected for the same reason; in 2009, the idea of by saying, “It just can’t happen overnight. Be patient.”

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 with having an ordinance that 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.”Letter from Birmingham Jail

Adam Bettcher/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Letter from Birmingham JailHundreds and hundreds of Black Lives Matter protestors have been in the last few years.

“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 Councilor 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 goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

Letter from Birmingham JailThe 2017 movie Get Out sparked widespread conversations about how and white allyship is too often .

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”

David McNew/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Letter from Birmingham JailWe see this in the constant ebb and flow of social movements and the fact that we’re in something of an activist boom these days. Who can forget all-too-recent cries that , or — but movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have recently brought crucial, previously-ignored causes into the national and mainstream conversation. People can only hold their tongues for so long.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice?”

In recent years, Black Lives Matter activists have often been called extremists as though it’s an insult. In 2016, for example, The National Review who “take extreme positions, retreat to moderation to bolster credibility, then go right back to the extreme when the pressure eases.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail”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.”

Taylor Campbell on YouTube

Enslaved black labor helped make the United States into the superpower that it is today. during her speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, saying, “That is the story of this country … I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

“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.”Letter from Birmingham Jail

Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The South is currently filled with landmarks depicting Confederate soldiers. White nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August to ; they attacked many counter-protestors and even killed one woman by running her over in a car. While that statue is being , many other Confederate monuments are . But we have a long way to go before the South totally stops lionizing racist separatists and instead, in the words of King, “recognize[s] its real heroes.”

The article was originally published here.

“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]”

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.

Letter from Birmingham Jail-I thinks 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 affiliated 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.

Letter from Birmingham JailBut more basically

Letter from Birmingham JailBut 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 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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.

Unfortunately, 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.

Letter from Birmingham JailIn any nonviolent campaign, there are four basic steps: a 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. Based on 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.

Based on these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s mayoral 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, 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 tension that a community that 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,

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 than dialogue.

Letter from Birmingham JailOne 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 the 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 in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.

Lamentably, it is a 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 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.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail – 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;

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-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,”.

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 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 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 that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail- 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: 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, substitutes an “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 has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?

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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or powerful majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.

This is a 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. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured? Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 with having an ordinance that 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.

Letter from Birmingham Jail – I hope you can 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 to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the 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, 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. Letter from Birmingham JailLetter from Birmingham Jail

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 Councilor 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.”

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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist to establish 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 about 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 you may be 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 the ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of goodwill.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 “somebodies” 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.

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.”Letter from Birmingham Jail

do-nothingism

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need to 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or love?

Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill, three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism.

Two were extremists for immorality and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 all 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–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 nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

Despite 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative 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?

I 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.Letter from Birmingham Jail

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 arch defender 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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

The police have indeed exercised a degree of 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

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 with a sense of dignity

Montgomery, Alabama, who rose 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 feet are 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,

Letter from Birmingham Jail courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake.

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were, in reality, standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell,

other than write long letters, think long thoughts, and pray long prayers?

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. Letter from Birmingham Jail

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.
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King, Martin Luther Jr.

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Letter from Birmingham Jail Quote Reaction

Select a quotation from King’s Letter (“Letter from Birmingham Jail”), and explain why you find it compelling or on what grounds you would challenge it.  Cite evidence from your own experience or reading to support your position.  Possible (but certainly not your only options) quotations include:Letter from Birmingham Jail
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (para. 4)
“…freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (para. 13)
“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” (para. 23)

Word Minimum: 400

The article was originally published here.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He helped the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his religious beliefs.

Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Here are 88 Iconic Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

1. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

2. “The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

4. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

5. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

6. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

7. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

8. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

9. “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.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

10. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

11. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

12. “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

13. “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

14. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

15. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

16. “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

17. “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

18. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

19. “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But despite temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

20th Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote – “That old law about ‘an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

21. “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

22. “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

23. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

24. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

25. “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

 

Martin Luther King Jr. quotes
 

26. “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

27. “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

28. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

29. “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

30. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

31. “The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life, is what is important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

32. “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 straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

33. “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

34. “Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

35. “Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

36. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

37. “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

38. “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

39. “Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

40th Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote – “The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

41. “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

42. “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

43. “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

44. “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

45. “Law and order exist to establish justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

46. “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

47. “Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

48. “Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities using which we live.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

49. “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

50. “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

51. “A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

52. “I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

53.“Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

54. “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

55. “Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

 

Martin Luther King Jr quotes
 

56. “Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

57. “A right delayed is a right denied.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

58. “The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

59. “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

60th Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote – “There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

61. “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

62. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

63. “Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

64. “Seeing is not always believing.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

65. “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

66. “We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

67. “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

68. “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

69. “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is, in reality, expressing the highest respect for the law.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

70. “If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

71. “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

72. “The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

73. “A lie cannot live.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

74. “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

75. “The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.” – Martin LLetter from Birmingham Jailuther King, Jr.

76. “We must use time creatively.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

77. “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.

78. “Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

79. “Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

80. “Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

81. “I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

82. “When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

83. “If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

84. “The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.Letter from Birmingham Jail

85. “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.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

86. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

87. “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

88. “War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

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