"Letter from the Birmingham Jail" - Worth Reading Again
It was April, 1963, Good Friday. Martin Luther King was thrown into jail for violating an injunction against demonstrating. While in jail, he was asked by a group of white clergy to show restraint, essentially to stop stirring up so much trouble. His "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" is his response. Why did he feel so compelled to fight the social situation? Following is a quote:
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 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 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 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" 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 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 despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
I'm from Alabama, born in a small rural town about 90 miles from Birmingham. I was 7 years old when Dr. King was jailed. "Nigger" was part of my vocabulary as a little boy. I witnessed the integration of my schools. Blacks rode in the back of the buses, sat in the back of the classes, and generally were the poorest of students. They owned no businesses in town, although a few were privileged to sweep the storefronts. Their shantytown at the edge of the city was filled with ramshackle homes and potholed streets. They never lived in our white neighborhoods or came to our white churches. We tolerated them, felt sorry for them, but deep inside we did not like them.
I changed. It was a process. My school teachers dared to avoid overt racism, giving me time to consider a tiny bit what life could be like without it. My brother went off to College, and came back insisting that I not use racist words. And I committed to knowing and following Jesus Christ while a teenager, and His teaching about love became a constant insistance that my heart change toward blacks, who were now my brothers and sisters whether I liked it or not.
I've been to Birmingham. There are parts of the city that look like a third-world country; they are black neighborhoods. And I've been to lily white churches that have no place for people who happen to have a different skin color. They make me sick.
This amazing man could have found plenty of justification for resolute hatred toward white people. It is an amazing testimony to his character, and even more to the power of God, that he found another avenue for changing his world.
I'd like for my daughters and I to take his little girl to Six Flags. I'd like to take Dr. King out to eat at the finest restaurant in town. I'd like for him to be my guest speaker for Sunday morning services. Of course, it's too late to do those things. But I can insist upon justice for all, as did he. It's simple. Not easy, but simple.
