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... 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.
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 am here because I have organizational ties here... But
more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here...
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 an 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 bad 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?"
.. .. .
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, we 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 have not made a single gain 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 stiff 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 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-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 no 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 won ask: "How can you advocate
breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact
that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat 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 distort 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 awful. Paul Tillich 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 ace 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 fan 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 an 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: "Any 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 rational 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 6e solid rock
of human dignity.
You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At fist I was rather
disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those
of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that 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 an 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 extremist 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, Jeans 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 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... 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 Rio shall lengthen.
.. .. .
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, on Biblical
distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
.. .. .
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, ham and all over the nation,
because the goal of America k 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.
... ..
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.