16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statementcallingmy present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of mywork andideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries wouldhave little timefor anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have notime forconstructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that yourcriticisms aresincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patientandreasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influencedby theview which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as presidentof theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southernstate, withheadquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations acrossthe South,and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we sharestaff,educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliatehere inBirmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if suchweredeemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise.So I,along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am herebecause I haveorganizational ties here.
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But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophetsof theeighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyondthe boundariesof their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carriedthe gospel ofJesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry thegospel offreedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedoniancall foraid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. Icannot sit idlyby in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere isa threatto justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in asingle garmentof destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can weafford to live withthe narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United Statescan never beconsidered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I amsorry tosay, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about thedemonstrations. I amsure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of socialanalysis that dealsmerely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate thatdemonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that thecity's whitepower structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts todeterminewhether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gonethrough allthese steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injusticeengulfs thiscommunity. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the UnitedStates. Its uglyrecord of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment inthe courts.There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than inanyother city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis ofthese conditions,Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistentlyrefused to engagein good faith negotiation.
Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham'seconomiccommunity. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by themerchants--forexample, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises,the ReverendFred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rightsagreed to amoratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that wewere thevictims 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 deepdisappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action,wherebywe would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience ofthe local andthe national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake aprocess of selfpurification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly askedourselves: "Areyou able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal ofjail?" We decidedto schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except forChristmas, this isthe main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal programwould bethe by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bringpressure to bear onthe merchants for the needed change.
Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, andwespeedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that theCommissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be inthe run off,we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that thedemonstrations couldnot be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated,and to thisend we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, wefeltthat our direct action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn'tnegotiation abetter path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the verypurpose of directaction. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tensionthat acommunity which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. Itseeks so todramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension aspart of thework of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I amnot afraid ofthe word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type ofconstructive,nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it wasnecessary to create atension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and halftruths to theunfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need fornonviolentgadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the darkdepths ofprejudice 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 itwillinevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call fornegotiation. Toolong has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologuerather thandialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associateshavetaken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new cityadministrationtime to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birminghamadministrationmust be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadlymistaken if wefeel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium toBirmingham. While Mr.Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists,dedicated tomaintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough tosee thefutility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressurefrom devoteesof civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain incivil rights withoutdetermined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact thatprivileged groupsseldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light andvoluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groupstend to be more immoral thanindividuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by theoppressor;it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct actioncampaign thatwas "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease ofsegregation.For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro withpiercing familiarity.This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of ourdistinguishedjurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. Thenations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining politicalindependence, butwe still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.Perhaps it iseasy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." Butwhen you haveseen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters andbrothers at whim;when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers andsisters;when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in anairtight cageof poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twistedand yourspeech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go tothe publicamusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up inher eyes whenshe is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds ofinferiority beginningto form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality bydeveloping anunconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a fiveyear oldson who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when youtake across county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortablecorners of yourautomobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out bynagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," yourmiddlename becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wifeandmother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and hauntedby nightby the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowingwhat toexpect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are foreverfighting adegenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult towait. Therecomes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to beplunged intothe abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidableimpatience.You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainlyalegitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court'sdecision of 1954outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem ratherparadoxical for usconsciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws andobeyingothers?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. Iwould be the firstto advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obeyjust laws.Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St.Augustinethat "an unjust law is no law at all." 152ee80cbc
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