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My Dear Fellow Clergymen,
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...But since I feel that you are men of genuine
good will 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
85 affiliate organizations all across the South...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.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) collection
of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation;
3) self-purification; and 4) direct action. We have gone through
all of these steps in Birmingham...Birmingham is probably the most
thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record
of police brutality is known in every section of the 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 city in this nation. These are the hard,
brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions
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. On the basis
of these promises Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium
on any type of demonstrations. 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 in 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 the process of self-purification. We
started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves
the questions, "are you able to accept the blows without retaliating?"
"Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?"
You may well ask, "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches,
etc.? 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 constantly
refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain
in civil rights without 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 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
a 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 340
years for our constitutional and God-given 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 20 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 the 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 who is 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" men 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 of "Mrs."; when you are harried
by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living
constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect
next, and 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 an abyss of injustice where they experience
the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand
our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
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' "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 can't agree with your methods of direst
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 good will is
more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill
will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright
rejection.
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 "somebodiness" that they have
adjusted to segregation, and a few Negroes in the middle class who,
because of a degree of academic and economic security, and at points
they profit from 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 in an incurable "devil."
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.
In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham
with the hope that the white religious leadership in the 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
worshippers 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 sideline 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
with which the Gospel has no real concern," and I have watched
so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly
religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul,
the sacred and the secular.
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 of their scintillating
beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
M. L. King, Jr.
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