Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. There are few works that are more satisfying to reread. You can find the full version here.

Why satisfying? Because it is a very beautiful letter, full of captivating phrasings and simple, elegant language. It also offers a devastating and concrete account of what it was like to be a Black person in this country, especially in the South in 1963. The famous paragraph that begins with why Black people are no longer willing to "wait," owing to the prejudices and everyday indignities they have so long endured, remains a mini-lesson in great writing that also has the rhetorical power to move people to action.

When he wrote this letter, Dr. King was responding to 8 so-called moderate clergyman (including one Rabbi) who had written a "Call for Unity" which somehow found space to praise the harsh tactics of the local police but offered no affirmation of the non-violent and dignified conduct of the Black demonstrators themselves. Here is the gist of their statement:

"However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely. We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experience of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment. Just as we formerly pointed out that "hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions", we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham. We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence. We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense."

And here is Dr. King's response to the failure of the clergymen to recognize and affirm the Black protesters:

"I wish you had commended the Negro 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 feets is tried but my soul is rested.' They will be 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."

The Letter is ultimately satisfying, because Dr. King proved to be so prescient in his Letter. Fifty years later most of us now recognize these freedom fighters to be the true patriots of this period. It is they we turn to for lessons on leadership. It is they we remember for their courage and forbearance. It is they whom we celebrate 50 years later. The Letter from a Birmingham Jail has become part of our democratic heritage. It is a reminder that in a dark time there are people who rose up and did, in fact, live out the true meaning of the American creed.