Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and like we do every year in honor of Dr. King’s memory, I’m posting an excerpt from his Letter From Birmingham Jail.
In these passages, Dr. King is explaining to a group of fellow clergy who wanted to confine the battle against segregation to the courts that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We have a moral obligation to confront injustice wherever it may rear its ugly head — and not just through legal means.
We may have regional and cultural differences, and the laws of our individual states may vary, but in the end, we are one country, one United set of States. (E pluribus unum!) Accordingly, Dr. King says that no American can be considered to be an outsider within the boundaries of their own country.
Here’s Dr. King. (Note that typos are contained in the original manuscript.)
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.
Take a few minutes today to read the whole thing.
Monday, January 15th, 2018
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Anyone who lives inside the U.S. can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds”
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and like we do every year in honor of Dr. King’s memory, I’m posting an excerpt from his Letter From Birmingham Jail.
In these passages, Dr. King is explaining to a group of fellow clergy who wanted to confine the battle against segregation to the courts that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We have a moral obligation to confront injustice wherever it may rear its ugly head — and not just through legal means.
We may have regional and cultural differences, and the laws of our individual states may vary, but in the end, we are one country, one United set of States. (E pluribus unum!) Accordingly, Dr. King says that no American can be considered to be an outsider within the boundaries of their own country.
Here’s Dr. King. (Note that typos are contained in the original manuscript.)
Take a few minutes today to read the whole thing.
# Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 9:15 AM
Categories: Civil Liberties, Holidays, Policy Topics
Tags: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Nondiscrimination
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