A Message From Prison, pt. 1
by on Jan 18th, 2010 at 12:01 am
On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. composed a letter to the white clergymen in Alabama who criticized his protests against the social injustices committed against African Americans in Birmingham. Writing from prison, Dr. King sought to defend himself and his cause.
Dr. King’s letter is one of the most compelling pieces of literature in our country’s history, and every man would benefit from reading it. His passion for justice, desire for partnership with others, love for his fellow man, and courage in the midst of crisis makes this letter more than just words on a page. Every year, on Martin Luther King Day, I read this letter to be reminded of the importance of racial reconciliation and to watch a man fight nobly for what matters.
I thought that this week would be a good time to share some powerful excerpts from the letter so that you can have an idea of what he tried to convey. I tried to include his thoughts concerning his strategy, view toward his opponents, philosophy of justice, and his refusal to back down even at the cost of his own freedom. Because there are many excerpts, this post has been divided into three parts.
If you wish to read the whole letter, you can find it at this link.
Immediately, he seeks to achieve resolution in his letter with his opponents, as opposed to attempting to tear them to pieces with an angry appeal. His willingness to think the best of his opponent is admirable and worthy of emulating:
But since i feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, i want to try to answer your statements in what i hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
The most famous quote from his letter is found within these lines:
I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
These white pastors were upset at the "trouble" Dr. King caused, but he chastises them for ignoring the deep-rooted issues that led to the problems in the first place:
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.
Dr. King’s opponents agreed, in principle, that racial injustice needed to be cured, but they insisted that the solutions would come over the course of time (an undetermined amount of time at that). They were willing to be patient, but as his words profess, such logic is only logical to those who are not suffering under the weight of such injustice.
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."
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that 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 go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
Dr. King understood that passivity or delay in doing the right thing is simply inexcusable. We must remember that he was speaking to men who were: 1) in positions of high social influence in their day, 2) claiming to be righteous men of God who wanted to honor Him with their lives, and 3) men who had long been aware of the racial injustice that was part of the fabric of Birmingham for decades. They had the ability to make changes happen and they did nothing, hoping that racial reconciliation would be created ex nihilo (out of nothing). Righteous leadership comes through courageous action and righteous change comes through active pursuit of justice. We can benefit from pondering Dr. King’s letter, but we must also seek to discover those injustices that lie within our spheres of influence so that we can help to bring healing to those issues.