http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yPiUqPkG40

Hear David Briddell describe what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  was like in School.  A friend and classmate, Briddell describes the young MLK’s study habits and how, even then, he seem to possess a faint vision of the man he would become.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
What was Martin Luther King, Jr. like in School? appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgt7P04_WIA

Hear Cardozo high school basketball coach Ron Naclerio recall how his dad, thoracic surgeon Dr. Emil Naclerio saved Martin Luther King Jr.’s life in 1958.

In September of 1958, Ms. Izola Ware Curry tried to kill Dr. King at a book signing with a letter opener. Read below from the Smoking Gun.

Convinced that King and NAACP leaders were surveilling her and conspiring to deny her employment, the delusional Curry approached the civil rights leader as he sat in a Harlem department store signing copies of his first book. She plunged the letter opener deep into the 29-year-old King’s chest after asking him, “Why do you annoy  me?” According to a transcript of Curry’s post-arrest interrogation, she calmly told investigators that her motive was self-preservation: “Because after all if it wasn’t him it would have been me, he was going to kill me.”

Curry, who pulled the letter opener from her purse, was also carrying a loaded Galesi-Brescia pistol, which was hidden inside her bra. Curry bought the gun a year earlier for $26 in Daytona Beach, but told investigators that she had never taken the weapon outside her home–until September 20, the day she stabbed King. Curry claimed that she had no intention to shoot King, but instead needed the pistol for protection in case the reverend’s followers attacked her.

When asked why she placed the gun in her bust and not her handbag, Curry replied, “Suppose I happened to drop the bag and the safety go off and some innocent person is hurt.” Such concern was not evident hours earlier when Curry stabbed King with such force that her letter opener pierced his sternum. As seen above, a photo published on the front page of the New York Daily News showed King with the letter opener sticking out of his upper chest.

After subsequently being found “in such a state of insanity” that she could not understand the attempted murder charge lodged against her (and, as a result, was incapable of aiding her defense), Curry was committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in upstate Fishkill, New York.

Curry, pictured at left, was 42 when she entered the state Department of Corrections facility. News of her commitment in November 1958–two months after she stabbed King–appeared in various newspapers, including The New York Times, which devoted three paragraphs to the development. It was the last time Curry’s whereabouts, or her condition, would be the subject of press coverage.

In the decade between King’s stabbing and his assassination, the civil rights leader would often recall the Harlem attack, noting how close he came to dying that Saturday afternoon in Blumstein’s department store. In fact, during the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixfwGLxRJU8

Land” speech King delivered in Memphis the day before he was murdered, he referred to Curry.

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up,” King told the Mason Temple audience. “Before I knew it, I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. That blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drowned in your own blood, that’s the end of you.” King added, “It came out in The New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died.”

As he closed the final address of his life, King remarked that, had he sneezed, he would have missed a decade’s worth of milestone events, including passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Selma marches, the Freedom Riders protests, and the March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Reflecting on what might not ever have been, King said, “I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.”

Since first publishing documents about King’s stabbing nearly 17 years ago, The Smoking Gun has intermittently tried to determine what became of the woman who nearly killed the civil rights leader. But checks of various databases and a wide variety of public records–real property, telephone, litigation, auto registration, civil judgments, voter rolls, and driver’s licenses–turned up no trace of Curry (or anyone  else named “Izola Curry”).

It was not hard to conclude that Curry was deceased. Actuarially speaking, in fact, it seemed likely she had died, perhaps decades earlier. Still, no obituaries or death notices had ever been published for Curry. Also, her name never appeared in the comprehensive death index maintained by the Social Security Administration.

After she tried to murder King, Curry disappeared into the state’s corrections/mental health system, apparently never to be heard from again.

Until last month.

While again conducting an every-few-years search for Curry, a TSG reporter discovered that an “Izola Curry” had registered to vote from a Queens address three months before the 2012 presidential election. A copy of Curry’s voter application form, obtained from the New York City Board of Elections, includes a Hillside Avenue home address and is stamped “NURSING HOME.” Most importantly, the document also lists the voter’s date of birth as June 14, 1916–identical to that of the “demented black woman” who tried to murder King.

Izola Curry, TSG discovered, has been living in Queens for about 40 years. While residing in predominantly African-American communities, she appears to have generated little, if any, notice. Which is understandable, since the details of King’s stabbing–let alone the name of his attacker–are largely lost to history. In fact, most Americans would be unable to name the man who actually succeeded in assassinating the civil rights leader.

Curry (seen at left) now resides in the Hillside Manor nursing home in Jamaica, a no-frills facility with 300 beds on bustling Hillside Avenue. The 98-year-old lives in a small room with a twin bed that looks out onto a rear parking lot. Next to her bed is a walker and a side table that appears to hold the entirety of her possessions–a stack of books, a couple of framed photos, and a small pink stuffed animal.

During a recent visit, a reporter found a snoozing Curry parked in a wheelchair outside her room at 11 AM. Ten other residents were similarly situated, scattered across the hallway in their wheelchairs. Some were sleeping, all were silent.

When the 98-year-old Curry awoke, she greeted a TSG reporter with a smile. “Miss Curry loves to talk,” offered a cheery attendant as she passed in the hallway.

During a 30-minute conversation, Curry spoke haltingly and, at times, mumbled answers that were hard to decipher. At one point, she directed her visitor to fetch a chair from her room so that he did not have to stand over her.

While Curry described her daily routine–up at 5:30 AM, bed around 10 PM, and not much going on in between–and how she ended up in the nursing home (seen at right), she met questions about King and the stabbing with a furrowed brow and a blank stare. While offering no recollections of the attack, Curry referred to “1958″ and said that she was placed that year in a “hospital for the criminally insane.”

One of eight children born to sharecroppers in Georgia, Curry said that she has no surviving family members. Wearing an ID bracelet on her wrist, Curry said she entered Hillside Manor a few years ago, after injuring her leg in a fall while living at a private “Family Care” home in Queens.

***

Born Izola Ware, Curry grew up in Adrian, Georgia, a city about 100 miles northwest of Savannah. She left school in the seventh grade and later married a man named James Curry when she was 21. The couple separated about six months after their 1937 nuptials, and Curry moved to New York City, the beginning of an itinerant existence that would see her bounce from Georgia, Florida, St. Louis, and New York while in search of steady work as a housekeeper, short-order cook, or factory worker.

In a Matteawan State Hospital report obtained by TSG, one of Curry’s sisters described her as a “somewhat disagreeable child who had never gotten along with other family members well. She frequently started arguments and was inclined to be jealous.” One of Curry’s siblings, the document noted, reportedly had been a patient at a Georgia state hospital, and then was institutionalized at a state-run psychiatric facilty in New York. In an interview with psychiatrists, Curry acknowledged she was “on poor terms with family members.”

According to court records, as well as law enforcement and psychiatric reports, Curry began suffering from delusions, paranoia, and illogical thinking for several years before she sought to kill King. This erratic state appears to have contributed to her difficulties in securing and maintaining employment.

By late-1958, Curry was living in a Harlem rooming house and struggling to make ends meet. Curry was convinced, two psychiatrists would report, that she was being persecuted by individuals she had never even met. Curry, the doctors noted, had somehow “developed the idea that the members of the NAACP were all communists and that they had been instrumental in and had been obstructing her from obtaining and retaining employment and that they had made scurrilous remarks about her.”

Additionally, Curry “believes she has been under constant surveillance and all her movements are known to the NAACP and Dr. King,” according to an October 1958 psychiatric report.

The night before King’s autograph session at Blumstein’s, the civil rights leader addressed a large rally on 125th Street in Harlem that featured remarks from Jackie Robinson, A. Phillip Randolph, New York Governor Averell Harriman, and Nelson Rockefeller, who was challenging Harriman for the governorship. In front of the stage, Duke Ellington conducted his band.

Following her arrest, Curry told cops and prosecutors that she had walked by the Friday evening rally en route to a double feature at a Harlem theater (she recalled watching a Tarzan movie and a “native picture”). While denying that she had planned to attack King at the rally, Curry remarked that she could have forced her way through the crowd and “probably I could have got up to him.” Curry was not asked whether she was carrying her gun or letter opener that night.

The next afternoon, Curry told investigators, she returned to125th Street to go “window shopping,” according to a 49-page transcript of her interrogation. She was wearing a smart suit, cat glasses, a necklace, and earrings, and was carrying a large black handbag. It was only after going into Blumstein’s, Curry claimed, that she realized King was signing copies of “Stride Toward Freedom,” his account of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott.

King recalled that Curry asked him, “Are you Martin Luther King?” as she approached his table. Curry told investigators that she told King he “had been annoying me a long time” and accused the civil rights figure of torturing her. “What did he say,” a prosecutor asked Curry. “I was drunk in my head I don’t know what he said,” she answered. “He looked up at me and what he said I don’t know.”

Though she had a loaded gun nestled in her bust, Curry took the letter opener from her purse and stabbed King in the chest. Curry, who was quickly apprehended, later complained that when cops grabbed her, “my bag flew out of my hand and my wallet and everything went all over the floor. Now, they didn’t stop to pick it up, they was so busy pushing me.” NYPD Officer Anthony Buancore, who arrested Curry, recalled that she said of King, “He took away my freedom. He and the NAACP were after me. This has been going on for the last five years. It’s a frameup and I lost job after job because of them.”

King, with the letter opener in his chest, was transported to Harlem Hospital, where surgeons operated to save his life. Had the weapon been pulled from his chest–as a couple of onlookers at Blumstein’s urged–King would likely have died in the store.

In a statement issued 10 days after the stabbing, King said that he felt “no ill will” toward Curry, adding that he knew “thoughtful people will do all in their power to see that she gets the help she apparently needs if she is to become a free and constructive member of society.” After a five-week convalescence in New York, King returned to Montgomery and told supporters at the airport that he was “deeply sorry that a deranged woman should have injured herself in seeking to injure me.” King declared, “I bear no bitterness toward her,” and repeated his hope that Curry received treatment that would let her become a “constructive citizen in an integrated society where a disorganized personality need not become a menace to any man.”

Following her police interrogation, Curry was quickly committed for observation at Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. While “usually cooperative and complacent” on the ward, Curry was prone to getting agitated and excited. “During these episodes, she is very demanding and has at times threatened to effect her escape. Also, it was noted that she has become threatening and assaultive,” according to a psychiatric report.

Curry was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by two psychiatrists who reported that she had an IQ of 70, “low average intelligence,” and was in a severe “state of insanity.” A Manhattan judge would later concur with the psychiatrists’s conclusion that Curry–who had been indicted for attempted murder–should be committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (seen at right).

Two months after stabbing King, Curry–described as a “forty-two year old colored female” in hospital records–arrived at Matteawan, where the most famous patient was George Metesky, the “Mad Bomber” who had been arrested and institutionalized the prior year for a 16-year bombing spree across New York City.

Upon admission to Matteawan, Curry showed no remorse for attacking King. She remained “generally suspicious, seclusive and resentful of correction. She is nasty and abusive at times,” officials noted in a clinical summary. At times, Curry was thought to be heard responding to voices in her room. Once, she spoke of killing someone there, saying, “The S.O.B. Rev. King ought to be here.”

In an interview with hospital staff, Curry denied that “anybody put her up to” harming King. The stabbing, Curry said, “was entirely her own idea,” according to a Matteawan report.

Further details about Curry’s specific course of treatment at Matteawan are unavailable, and access to her case file–now in the custody of the New York State Archives–is restricted due to the state’s Mental Hygiene Law. However, a 1980 letter from the New York State Office of Mental Hygiene provides some general details about Curry’s term at Matteawan.

According to the letter, Curry spent nearly 14 years at the upstate New York facility before being transferred in March 1972 to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island in upper Manhattan. She spent about a year there before officials placed her in the Rosedale, Queens home of a woman certified through the state’s “Family Care” program to provide residential care for those diagnosed with mental illnesses.

At the time of the 1980 letter, a state psychiatrist reported, Curry had spent the prior seven years in “Family Care,” a period during which “there have been no incidents of hostility or aggressiveness and she has been able to get along satisfactorily in the home and the community.” Dr. Avram Finger added that Curry’s delusions “are, at present, absent and she has not required psychotropic medication for the past 4 years.” Additionally, following an examination by a panel of Manhattan Psychiatric Center officials, Curry was judged to be “coherent, relevant, cooperative and no present danger to self or others.”

Curry remained in the “Family Care” program, apparently residing in at least one other Queens home since Dr. Finger provided an update on her condition. Curry told a TSG reporter she was living in a “Family Care” residence in Queens when she fell and injured her left leg (which prompted her admission to the long-term nursing home where she now lives).

***

At the end of a recent visit, a Hillside Manor attendant approached Curry to let her know that lunch would soon be served. When a reporter asked how she liked the food at the home, Curry remarked that she does not eat much, since she watches her weight. When told that was not often a concern for someone pushing 100, Curry offered her visitor a broad smile.

As she began navigating toward the dining room–first by pulling herself along via a handrail on the wall–Curry accepted an offer of a push. But as the dining room neared, she began using her right leg to propel the creaky wheelchair forward.

“I’ve got it from here,” Curry said as she headed off alone down the hallway. (26 pages)

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
Izola Curry: Ron Naclerio on How His Dad Saved MLK’s Life appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvv2f6zsJEs

Reverend Thomas Lane Butts discusses meeting Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his participation in the march on Selma.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
Revered Thomas Lane Butts On The Selma March appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMhrBKwtbVs

Former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford shares his favorite memory of meeting Martin Luther King Jr. and remembers discussing the inevitable assassination of such a prominent civil rights leader with his wife, Coretta Scott King. Wofford then explains what MLK Day means to him and how he thinks the holiday should celebrate King’s goals of equality. He also recalls the fight it took to create the holiday in the first place, though it had support from many sides. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that all 50 states celebrated MLK Day. The day was singed into law as a Federal holiday by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and was first celebrated in 1986 after Wofford and other politicians voiced their support.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
‘A Day When We Try to Fulfill the Goals MLK Gave His Life For’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtBnXJEgAP4

On April 4, 1968, at the age of 39, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In this video, his friend, advisor and draft speechwriter Dr. Clarence B. Jones recalls hearing the news of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death and speaks about his initial thoughts and reactions. On first getting word of the assassination he says: “Within the first fifteen seconds of the news, the first thing that came across my mind were exactly these words: They finally got him.” Of how he felt in the days after, Jones says: “It was hard to cope. Or to give you some magnitude how hard to cope it was, I had this discussion with myself and with a couple of friends. It started out with ‘I don’t know that I can continue to live in this country.’ ‘Well, where are you gonna go?’ ‘I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I don’t know that I can continue to live in this country.” ‘Why?’ ‘Because I can’t… A country that would do this was just more than I could bear’. And I was really fearful, quite frankly”.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Clarence B. Jones Remembers MLK’s Assassination appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uXd4RUFwoY

Former mayor of Washington, D.C. Marion Barry explains why the struggle for civil rights is not over and the power of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
Marion Barry: ‘The Struggle Is Not Over’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxxxnKW_YVA

Wendell Jackson, a Washington, D.C. native and current resident, describes what it was like to be involved in the 1968 D.C. riots that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackson describes participating in the looting of a liquor store across the street from him and recalls what the city looked like after the riots–describing it as resembling a “war zone.”

The post 1968 Washington D.C. Riots
D.C. Was a ‘War Zone’ During the 1968 Riots appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Rev. Dr. John F Baggett

“Martin has known from the beginning that the movement could cost him his life…”

Over the years I have recalled many times these prophetic words spoken to me with serene dignity in private conversation, by Coretta Scott King, wife of Dr. Martin Luther King. At the time, Coretta, Rev. John Porter, and I were sharing a plane ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia on the evening of Sunday, March 16, 1965. It was the end of the first day of the Selma to Montgomery March. Dr. King, as we all know, was gunned down by an assassin three years later on March 29, 1968.

Coretta, whose home had been bombed during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, was herself an amazingly courageous woman, risking her own life many times to walk by Martin’s side. We had both marched that day, along with almost 8,000 others, made up mostly of African Americans, but with a sprinkling of white clergy from around the country mixed in. As the four lane road between Selma and Montgomery narrowed to two, only three hundred marchers were allowed by the court to continue toward Montgomery. Most of the rest of us returned to Selma and some of us headed home. When we shared that plane ride, Coretta was returning to her family in Atlanta, and I was on my way back to my family and church in the stockyards area of Chicago.

My journey had begun two weeks earlier on Sunday March 7, which has come to be known in Civil Rights history as “Bloody Sunday.”  On that day I watched the television in horror and disgust as white law enforcement officers and deputies mercilessly beat and tear gassed a non-violent group of 600 African Americans as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I knew in that moment that God was sending me to Selma that week.

On Tuesday, March 9, Dr. King led a somewhat larger group to the same bridge, but they turned around before there could be another confrontation. That evening, a friend of mine, Rev Jerry Forshey, who had participated in the Tuesday march, was in downtown Selma at a drugstore along with Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister. While Jerry was talking with someone in the store, Reeb left, intending to walk a few blocks back to the African American community. Reeb was surrounded by a group of men and beaten to death.

I arrived in Selma on Thursday. On Saturday, around 150 of us marched through the Selma mayor’s neighborhood to protest the publicly sanctioned violence toward the protestors. Along the way people threatened us with curses and guns. Some of our group were viciously assaulted. We were arrested and herded into school buses where our bodies were packed together so tightly it was difficult to breathe. We were driven to the jail where we were required to stand outside in the hot sun for over two hours. There was no room in the jail so we were led to a community facility for incarceration. After a sleepless night in which we feared the Ku Klux Klan would bomb our temporary prison, our guards disappeared and we marched uneasily back to the movement headquarters at Browns Chapel Church.

On Tuesday, March 16, thousands assembled outside the church. Communion was served and Dr. King spoke. Now protected by Federal injunction and national guardsmen, we began to march through the streets and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge toward Montgomery. After several miles of marching, the majority of us returned to Selma.

That night a kind African American older couple risked their lives to drive me to the airport in Montgomery. I lay covered by a blanket on the floorboard of the backseat of their car. If my white face had been seen by members of the Klan, we would all have likely been killed. Only a few days later, Klan members killed civil rights volunteer Viola Liuzzo on that same road.

And so I found myself sitting with Coretta on that plane ride to Atlanta. It is difficult today for us to understand the animosity that existed then. I have never before or since heard the level of vile language, or seen the kind of hatred in people’s eyes, that I witnessed coming from the white people, many of them no doubt active church members, lining the streets of Selma during the marches.

The Selma to Montgomery march touched the conscience of America. Selma was about voting rights for African Americans in the South. Through a variety of strategies, including poll taxes, voter registration fraud, and violence, African Americans in the 1960s were denied the right to vote. Selma was the catalyst that made possible the Civil Rights Act, which was introduced in Congress on March 17, 1965.

The right to vote is a right of every adult American citizen. It has been paid for by every soldier who ever fought for our country, and by every civil rights worker who died or risked beatings and death to end voter discrimination. No matter what our politics, we must never ever allow any group of people, especially elected representatives, to hinder and deny the legitimate rights of American citizens to exercise their right to vote.

The post Coretta Scott King
[Text] Remembering Selma and Corretta Scott King appeared first on Witnify.

https://

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLvZQQozGFw

Author and poet Maya Angelou discusses her work with Martin Luther King, Jr. She recalls where she was when she found out King had been assassinated–on the same day as her birthday: “Life stopped for me…”

The post Malcolm X
Maya Angelou on Finding Out MLK Was Killed appeared first on Witnify.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

(Read the full text below.)
April 16, 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your 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. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

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

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?” We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham’s 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.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, 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 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 an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr 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 county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you 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.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

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

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

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

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

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

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

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

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

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the “do nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I 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.

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

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

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

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

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor 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 archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

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

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in 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 nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

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

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

To read more about  Martin Luther King Jr. and the time he spent in jail, visit the University of Pennsylvania’s African Studies Center.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
[Text] Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail appeared first on Witnify.