Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter From A Birmingham Jail
(April 16, 1963)
Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of ississippi State Historical Archives.
AUTHOR'S
NOTE: This response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen
from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi
Hilton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the
Reverend George M. Murray. the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the
Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat constricting
circumstance. Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the
statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on
scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and
concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to. leave me.
Although the text remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in the
author's prerogative of polishing it for publication.
MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:
While
confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent
statement calling my 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 statements 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 Rights. 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
communities and states. I cannot sit idly by 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
mutuality, 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
Brimingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a
similar concern for the 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; self-purification; and direct action. We
have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no
gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community.
Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly 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 than 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 bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled
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 the conscience of the 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
retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to
schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing
that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year.
Knowing that a strong economic with with-drawal 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 speedily decided to postpone action until after election
day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene
"Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-oat 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 to 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 that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have
earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive,
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 the bondage of myths and half-truths to the
unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must
we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to 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 understanding and brotherhood.
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 negotiation. Too long has our
beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic 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 that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor. will
bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more
gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated
to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope 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 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 than
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 the view of those who have not suffered unduly
from the disease of segregation. 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."
We have waited .for more than 340 years for our
constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are
moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we
stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a
lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the
stinging dark 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 and even kill your black brothers and sisters; 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 ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to
form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her
personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people;
when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is
asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when
you take a cross-county 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
tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued
with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no 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 the abyss of
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable
impatience.
You express a great deal of anxiety over our
willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since
we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of
1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may
seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won
ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The
answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and
unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not
only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely,
one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree
with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"
Now, what
is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law
is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the
moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of
harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas
Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal .law
and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any
law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes
are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the
personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and
the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the
terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an
"I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating
persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only
politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally
wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not
segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his
awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge
men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally
right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they
are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just
and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power
majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make
binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a
just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that
it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Let
me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a
minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no
part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature
of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically
elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to
prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some
counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the
population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under
such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
Sometimes
a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I
have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there
is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a
parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain
segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of
peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to ace the
distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading
or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead
to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly,
and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an
individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who
willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the
conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing
the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new
about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the
refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of
Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It
was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face
hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than
submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic
freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil
disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a
massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that
everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the
Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was
"illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am
sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and
comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country
where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I
would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
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. . . .
You speak of our activity in Birmingham
as extreme. At fist I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen
would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began
thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces
in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part
of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained
of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to
segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a
degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they
profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the
masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes
perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various
black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the
largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement.
Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of
racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost
faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who
have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."
I
have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need
emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and
despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way
of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the
influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral
part of our struggle.
If this philosophy had not emerged, by now
many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood.
And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as
"rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ
nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent
efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek
solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies a development that
would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed
people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom
eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the
American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of
freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained.
Consciously or. unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist,
and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers
of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is
moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial
justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro
community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are
taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent
frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make
prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides-and try
to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not
released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence;
this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my
people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that
this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative
outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being
termed extremist.
But though I was initially disappointed at being
categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I
gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not
Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice:
"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream. . . ." Never before have I written so long a
letter. I'm afraid 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
from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he k alone in a
narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and
pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter that
overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you
to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and
indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for 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 from
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 their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas Memorial, hand in hand. The end of slavery is a team effort.
