Letter From Birmingham Jail
Introduction. Birmingham, Alabama, at the peak of the civil rights movement, was the bastion of racial segregation. In this city, separate public facilities for white and black people such as toilets, lunch counters, stores, and bars, among others was conventional. Signs stating, “Whites Only” or “Coloreds” can be seen in every establishment, giving emphasis on their implementation of segregation laws. Of course, this was only the tip of the iceberg. African Americans, at that time, experienced more than exclusion. They also suffered from prejudiced court decisions, physical and verbal abuse on a day-to-day basis and bombings of churches and houses that killed innocent people, including children. Birmingham was also where the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was most active and they were mostly capable of doing anything they wanted to assert their acts of discrimination towards the black people. In addition to this, Birmingham’s political leaders were not very keen about integration, including Alabama’s new Governor, George Wallace . Hence, protests against these segregation laws were met with violence and arrests.
The Events in Birmingham. In 1963, Martin Luther King joined the protesters in Birmingham with the objective to take the city’s issues to the nation’s attention. He was hoping for an intervention from the United States’ President, John F. Kennedy. However, King was arrested for leading some of the marches they conducted. While he was in prison, he wrote a letter in response to the eight white religious leaders of the South’s public statement of concern and caution regarding the protests that have been taking place in Birmingham.
Martin Luther King’s Disappointments. In his letter, MLK recounted the events that led to the need to organize this series of demonstrations. Primarily, the succession of discussions and negotiations for simple, but significant, changes in Birmingham in favour of the black community has fallen to deaf ears. Furthermore, the church leaders King was addressing in his letter have tagged these protests as untimely, to which he expressed his disappointment and asserted that, "Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was 'well-timed' according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation ." He also emphasized on the fact that the African Americans have been told to “wait” for centuries, as they would experience their freedom in due time.
King, likewise, expressed his disappointment in the white church. He was expecting to get their support in the Negro movement for equality and civil rights; instead, they have remained silent about it. Some have even propagated the popular view of segregation. In addition, the warm commendation given to the Birmingham police force for their efforts to maintain order and preventing violence was another of MLK’s disappointments. His actions and initiative to lead the protests in Birmingham have also been labelled as extremist.
The White Moderates. With this, Martin Luther King shared his thoughts that white moderates are more dangerous to freedom than the KKK. He pointing out that it was better to be rejected outright than to be told to put your freedom on hold for the sake of order rather than justice. On a personal note, I agree with Mr. King on his statement, because freedom is something that you either take or you don’t. It is always a decisive choice that one has to make and that decision also means doing something about it. As a supporter or an advocate of a certain issue, one cannot tell someone who is suffering from abuse or rights violations that he/she must wait, because justice will prevail; it could be given by the next judge in the court or by God in heaven.
The Nonviolent Approach to Civil Rights and the Black Nationalist Movement. Martin Luther King was thwarted by the fact that the church leaders he addressed in this letter thought of the Birmingham protests as extremist, considering that the approach they employed was nonviolent. This process has four basic steps, data collection to validate occurrences of injustice, negotiations, self-purification, and direct action. What took place in Birmingham was the fourth step or direct action. This means that they have already followed the first three steps before arriving to this stage. According to MLK, the fourth step is done only because the first three steps did not give results. The purpose of the fourth step was to create a situation “so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation .” King believed that the nonviolent approach would work because in crisis situations, communities would be forced to meet the issues head-on, as they can no longer be ignored.
However, despite having devised this approach, MLK still felt trapped between two conflicting forces within the black community. One group has become complacent, because it was either they were already well-adjusted to the segregation after long years of oppression or they are in the middle class that are socially and economically secure. The other group, the black nationalist movement, on the other hand, has come close to resorting to violence because they have lost hope that help would come; might as well take matters into their own hands. King was only calling to strike a balance between the two groups by opening an avenue for peacefully expressing despair and, at the same time, being able to take action to change their situation.
On these two accounts, I agree with Martin Luther King that the nonviolent approach is indeed a way to take initiative to change one’s situation. Demonstrations and protests, if handled correctly, would get the message across without bloodshed or resorting to violence. I also agree with Mr. King on his views about the black nationalist movement. It would not be possible to blame a group of people to resort to violence, given the levels of oppression that they have gone through for centuries.
Conclusion. Reading this letter and the other reference materials for this paper somewhat became a time machine. The vivid descriptions from King’s letter and those other articles I’ve read made me wince a lot and feel shivers down my spine, thinking about how much pain people can inflict on others because one feels superior over the other because of appearance and feels the need to assert it. This paper also helped me analyse that social change is a result of taking action continuously, entails a series of conflicts, and involves the participation and dynamism of the economic, social and political elements at play.
References
King, M. L. (1963, August). Letter from Birmingham Jail. Birmingham, Alabama.
Modern American Poetry. (n.d.). About the 1963 Birmingham Bombing. Retrieved October 2014, from Modern American Poetry: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/randall/birmingham.htm
The National Archives. (n.d.). King & civil rights. Retrieved October 2014, from The National Archives: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g6/cs2/
