“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr

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 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 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 so 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; selfpurification; and direct
action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no
gain saying 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 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 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 retaliation?” “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 economicwithdrawal 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 “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 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 halftruths 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 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
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 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 that 340 years for our constitutional and Godgiven
rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike 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-country
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 your 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 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 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 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 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,
his terrible sinfulness? Thus is it 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 it’s 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 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 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 Councilor 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 Icannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically
believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a
mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro the wait for
a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of
good will is more frustrating that 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 it 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 relations 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 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 the 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 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 clergyman 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 closed
on 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 blacknationalist 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 and 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
am 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 Calvery’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 nonsegregated 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 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.

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 otherworldly 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 for Governor
Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they
when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call 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. 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 Gad 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 archdefender 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 to 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 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, 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
if freedom. Abuse and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with
America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, 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 bottomless vitality
they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery
could not stop us, the opposition we not 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 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 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 demonstrations. 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 or
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 when her people decided not to ride
segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who
inquired 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.