From
Letter From
Birmingham City
Jail
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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 presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of
freedom in Birmingham and all over
the nation, because the goal of America
is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with
the destiny of America.
Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth
we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across
the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we
were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents
labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; and they built
the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful
humiliation – and yet out of 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.
I must close now. Bt before closing I am impelled to mention one other point
in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham
police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I don’t believe you
would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry
violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don’t believe
you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and
inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them
push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them
slap and kick old Negro men and young Negro boys; if you will observe them, as
they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our
grace together. I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police
department.
It is true that they have been
rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense
they have been rather publicly “nonviolent.” But for what
purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation.
Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands
that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to
make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But
now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means
to preserve immoral ends. Maybe Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather
publicly nonviolent, as Chief Pritchett was in Albany,
Georgia, but they have
used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of flagrant
racial injustice. T. S. Eliot has said that there is no greater treason than to
do the right deed for the wrong reason.
I wish you had commended the negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham
for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing
discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will
recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths,
courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile
mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer.
They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a
seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of
dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and
responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity:
“My feet is tired, but my soul is rested.” They will be the young high school
and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders
courageously and nonviolently sitting-in at lunch counters and willingly going
to jail for conscience’s sake. One day the South will know that when these
disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality
standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in
our Judeo-Christian heritage, and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to
those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in
the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written a
letter this long (or should I say a book?). I’m afraid that it is much too long
to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much
shorter if I had been writing form a comfortable desk, but what else is there
to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell
other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this
letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an
unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in
this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my
having a patience that makes me patient with 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 form 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,
Martin Luther King, Jr.