While Martin Luther King Jr. was in Birmingham’s city jail last April, a group of white clergymen wrote a public statement criticizing him for “unwise and untimely” demonstrations. King wrote a reply—on pieces of toilet paper, the margins of newspapers, and anything else he could get his hands on—and smuggled it out to an aide in bits and pieces. Although in the tumble of events then and since, it never got the notice it deserved, it may yet live as a classic expression of the Negro revolution of 1963. Excerpts from the letter, which was addressed to “My Dear Fellow Clergymen”:
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 the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess 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, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters; 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 little eyes when she is told that “Funtown” is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored,” when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when 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 plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobody-ness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. Isn’t this like condemning the 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 delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the 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 the Crucifixion?
The question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill, three men 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. So, after all, maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries, our foreparents labored in this country without wages; they made cotton “king,” and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal 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. The main source of Negro discontent is economic hardship. Fortunately, this is the one area where progress seems most likely—more and better jobs for Negroes are on the way. Already, 115 firms’ have joined the Plans for Progress program backed by the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Of 60,000 new employees they hired in the past three months, 25% were Negro. Under past practice the figure would have been only 3%. At least 50 large firms are actively recruiting Negroes. They include A.T. & T., National Tea, IBM, Western Electric, General Electric, Standard Oil Co. (N.J.), RCA. Seven New York companies recently contributed $6,000 each to conduct an eleven-week course in grooming and confidence-building techniques to help Negro secretarial school graduates land jobs. Connecticut’s Pitney-Bowes, manufacturers of mailing machines, announced a policy of preferential hiring for Negroes. In the South, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. built a new plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., uses Negroes in supervisory positions over whites. Such firms as Pepsi-Cola, Schenley Industries and McCann-Erickson have Negro vice presidents.
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