Martin Luther King, Jr.: Nonviolent direct action is what makes negotiation possible

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 makes the case for the val­ue of direct action (cit­ing the exam­ples of sit-ins, march­es, and so forth) to his audi­ence, explain­ing that non­vi­o­lent direct action sets the stage for nego­ti­a­tion. His­to­ry, he observed, has shown that civ­il rights advances are nev­er achieved except through pressure.

Many decades have elapsed since these words were writ­ten. Sad­ly, racism and injus­tice remain a painful real­i­ty for many peo­ple in this country.

Nev­er­the­less, the strug­gle for greater free­dom and equal­i­ty continues.

Here’s Dr. King. (Note that typos are con­tained in the orig­i­nal manuscript.)

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.

Take a few min­utes today to read the whole thing.