MARTIN LUTHER KING's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" ...
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 fail 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 all
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: "All
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 irrational 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 the solid rock of human dignity.
