Page 4
January 2006
The AC Phoenix
“...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL”
LEHER FROM THE BIRMINGHAM JAIL
.And Justice
For AH '
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Letter
from the
Birminghaii
Jail
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent
statement calling present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to
answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that
cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such
correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive
work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms
are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be
patient and reasonable terms,
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been
influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor
of serving as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an
organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them
is the Alabama Christian Movement for
Human Righfs. Frequently we share staff,
educational and financial resources with our
affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate
here in Birmingham asked us to be on call
to engage in a nonviolent direct-action
program if such were deemed 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 here
because I have organizational ties here.
But more basically, I am in Birmingham
because injustice is here. Just as the
prophets of the eighth century B.C, left their
villages and carried their "thus saith the
Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their
home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul
left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the
Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my
own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communifies and states. I
cannot sit idly in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutualify, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow,
provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never
be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I
am sorry to say, fails so express a similar concern for fhe conditions that brought
about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with
the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not
grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place
in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left
the Negro community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to
determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; selfpurification; and direct action. We
have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gain saying the tact
that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thor
oughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely
known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have
been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham that in
any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis
of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the
latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.
Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's
economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made
by the merchants - for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the
basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all
demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the
victims 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
deep disappoinfmenf setfled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for
direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our
case before fhe conscience of fhe local and the national community. Mindful of the
difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began
a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you
able to accept blows without retaliation?" "are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?"
We decided fo schedule our direct-action program for fhe Easter season, realizing that
except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of fhe year. Knowing that a
strong economicwit.hdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt
that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the
needed change.
Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in
March, and we speedHy decided to postpone action until after election day. When we
discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bill" Connor, had piled
up enough votes to be in the run-off, we decided again to postpone action until the
day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues.
Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured
postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that
our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? isn't
negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is
the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a
crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused fo
negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can
no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the
nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess fhat I am not afraid
of fhe word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of
consfructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt
that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from
fhe bondage of myths and halftruths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and
objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies fo create the kind
of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and
racism to the majestic heights of undersfanding and brofherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed
that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your
call for negofiation. Too long has our beloved Soufhland been bogged down in a
fragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my
associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you
give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this
query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as
the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel fhat the
election of Alberf Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr.
Boutwell is a much more gentle person that Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists,
dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hoped that Mr. Boutwell will be
reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he
will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say
to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and
nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom
give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily
give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to
be more immoral that individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the
oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a
direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in view of those who have not suffered
unduly from the disease of segregafion. For years now I have heard the word "wait!"
It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always
meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that
"justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Excerpt from “And Justice for All”, Letter from the Birmingham Jail. This
letter can be read in its entirety at coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/docu-
ments/letter.html.
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