Ethics Assignment

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The White Ministers’ Law and Order Statement January 16, 1963

In these times of tremendous tensions, and change in cherished patterns of life in our beloved

Southland, it is essential that men who occupy places of responsibility and leadership shall speak

concerning their honest convictions.

We the undersigned clergymen have been chosen to carry heavy responsibility in our

religious groups. We speak in a spirit of humility, and only for ourselves. We do not pretend to

know all the answers, for the issues are not simple. Nevertheless, we believe our people expect

and deserve leadership from us, and we speak with firm conviction for we do know the ultimate

spirit in which all problems of human relations must be solved.

It is clear that a series of court decisions will soon bring about desegregation of certain

schools and colleges in Alabama. Many sincere people oppose this change and are deeply

troubled by it. As southerners, we understand this. We nevertheless feel that defiance is neither

the right answer nor the solution. And we feel that inflammatory and rebellious statements can

lead only to violence, discord, confusion, and disgrace for our beloved state.

We therefore affirm, and commend to our people:

1. That hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions.

2. That there may be disagreement concerning laws and social change without advocating

defiance, anarchy, and subversion.

3. That laws may be tested in courts or changed by legislatures, but not ignored by whims of

individuals.

4. That constitutions may be amended or judges impeached by proper action, but our

American way of life depends upon obedience to the decisions of courts of competent

jurisdiction in the meantime.

5. That no person’s freedom is safe unless every person’s freedom is equally protected.

6. That freedom of speech must at all costs be preserved and exercised without fear of

recrimination or harassment.

7. That every human being is created in the image of God and is entitled to respect as a

fellow human being with all basic rights, privileges, and responsibilities which belong to

humanity.

We respectfully urge those who strongly oppose desegregation to pursue their convictions in

the courts, and in the meantime peacefully to abide by the decisions of those same courts.

We recognize that our problems cannot be solved in our strength or on the basis of human

wisdom alone. The situation that confronts us calls for earnest prayer, for clear thought, for

understanding love, and or courageous action. Thus we call on all people of goodwill to join us

in seeking divine guidance as we make our appeal for law and order and common sense.

Signed by:

Bishop Nolan B. Harmon Rabbi Milton L. Grafman

Bishop Paul Hardin Rev. Edward V. Ramage

Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter Rev. Soterios D.Gouvellis

Bishop Joseph A. Durick Rabbi Eugene Blackschleger

Rev. Earl Stallings J. T. Beale

Rev. George M. Murray

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The White Ministers’ Good Friday Statement April 12, 1963

We the undersigned clergymen are among those who, in January, issued “an appeal for law

and order and common sense,” in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed

understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts,

but urged decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.

Since that time there had been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to

face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems that cause racial

friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have

opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.

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 that has called for honest and open

negotiations of racial issues 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 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.

Signed by:

Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter Bishop Nolan B. Harmon

Bishop Joseph A. Durick Rev. George M. Murray

Rabbi Milton L. Grafman Rev. Edward V. Ramage

Bishop Paul Hardin Rev. Earl Stallings

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Letter from Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963

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 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 that 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 says 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 Birmingham. 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

all 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.

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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 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 withdrawal program would be the

byproduct 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 mayoral 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

runoff, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the runoff 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 that 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, so 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 my associates and I 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,

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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 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 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 jet-like speed toward gaining political independence,

but we still 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 darts 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 are 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 well ask, “How can you advocate

breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of

laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a

legal, but also a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral

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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 distorts 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 also morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not

segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, and 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 that 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 see 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

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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 anti-religious 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.

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

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progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men

willing to be coworkers 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.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that

fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking

about the fact that I 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

nothing-ism” 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

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persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and

righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel:

“I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I

stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end

of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation

cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be

self-evident, that all men are created equal…” So the question is not whether we will be

extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?

Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that

dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three

were crucified for the same crime: the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality,

and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth

and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the

world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic;

perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the

oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race,

and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and

determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have

grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all

too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some – such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith,

Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden, and Sarah Patton Boyle – have written about

our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless

streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach infested jails, suffering the abuse and

brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their

moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the

need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed

with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not

unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I

commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming

Negroes to your worship service on a non-segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of

this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago. But despite these notable

exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the Church. I do not say

this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the Church. I

say this as a minister of the gospel who loves the Church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who

has been sustained by its spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of

life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery,

Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white

ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some

have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and

misrepresenting its leaders. All too many others have been more cautious than courageous, and

have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious

leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern,

would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I

had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

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I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with

a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare,

“Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.”

In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand

on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a

mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers

say, “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched

many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion, which makes a

strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi, and all the other southern

states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s

beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive

outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking,

“What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips

of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they

when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of

support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons

of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity

of the Church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep

disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the Church. How could I do

otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great-

grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have

blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being

nonconformists.

There was a time when the Church was very powerful, in the time when the early Christians

rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was

not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion. It was a

thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town,

the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being

“disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the

conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in

number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically

intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as

infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary

church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of

the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of

the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent, and often even vocal, sanction of

things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the Church as never before. If today’s church does not

recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of

millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the Church has turned into outright

disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound

to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner

spiritual church, the church within the Church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world.

But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have

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broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the

struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of

Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for

freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches

and have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith

that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that

has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel

of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. 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 at present 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 America’s destiny. Before

the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic

words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more

than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king;

they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation.

And yet, out of a 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. Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your

statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police

force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly

commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent

Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their

ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and

curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro

men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give

us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the

Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators.

In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what

purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently

preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I

have tried to make 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 perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve

immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as

was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to

maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said, “The last temptation is the

greatest treason: 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 great

provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James

Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs,

and with 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 in

Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to

ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired

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about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” They will be the young high

school and college students, the 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’ 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 what is best in the American dream

and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back

to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their

formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

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 is 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.