I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in 40 your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I don't believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs
literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don't believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you will observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I'm sorry that I can't join you in your praise for the police department.
It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense they have been rather publicly "nonviolent." But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it 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 even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Maybe Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather publicly nonviolent, as Chief Pritchett was in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of flagrant racial injustice. T. S. Eliot has said that there is no greater treason than to do the right deed for the wrong reason.23
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 the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths,24 courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and 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 of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity: "My feet is tired, but my soul is rested." They will be the young high school and college students, 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's 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 the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written a letter this long (or should I say a book?). I'm afraid that 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
23. T. S. Eliot: British (American-born) poet 24. The James Merediths: See note 18. (1888-1965); the text is from his play Murder in the Cathedral.
else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?
If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with 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 45 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 of their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
How does King answer the major criticisms raised in the letter: that the Birmingham demonstrations are being directed by outsiders, that they are making tensions worse, and that they are encouraging disrespect for the law?
What portions of the letter speak to people other than (or in addition to) the clergymen to whom it is addressed? Through what elements does King appeal to the letter's potential nonclerical audience?
What does King mean by "we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community"?
What criteria does King give for determining whether or not a law is unjust? What different definitions of "unjust law" does he propose?
Why does King consider white moderates to be more of an obstacle than overt racists to the progress of civil rights? Why does he seem more concerned about the lack of support from those who agree with his ends than about those who want to defeat everything that he stands for?
How does King contrast Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslim movement with his own activism? What is the rhetorical effect of this comparison?
How does King respond to the charge that he is an "extremist"? In what way does he redefine the traditional definition of "extremism"?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
1. Does King's implicit assertion that the ends of segregation justify the means of breaking the law constitute a Machiavellian argument (p. 405)? How so? Does King say
that any means are acceptable to this end? Or does he argue that certain means (such as violence) are inherently unacceptable?
Compare King's views of democracy, civil disobedience, and nonviolence with those of Aung San Suu Kyi (p. 442). How might the two figures be seen as parts of the same philosophical tradition, despite their differences in religion and culture?
Thomas Aquinas (p. 483), whom King quotes in this essay for his opposition to unjust laws, is an important thinker in the "just war" tradition. What basic conception of natural law underlies the ideas of "just law" and "just war"?
How do King's experiences with segregation compare with the experience of apartheid described in Desmond Tutu's "Nuremberg or National Amnesia: A Third Way" (p. 450)?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Use King's definitions of "just" and "unjust" laws to make the argument that a certain current law (national or local) or policy of your school is "unjust."
Think of conditions that would cause you to disobey a law. Write a "Letter from " to explain your disobedience.
Evaluate the potential effectiveness of nonviolent direct action in different kinds of political systems. Would the kinds of demonstrations that Martin Luther King Jr. staged in Birmingham work in other, more repressive political situations? (Consider, for example, Nazi Germany, where "civil disobedients" were routinely rounded up and shot.) At what point, if any, should a belief in nonviolence give way to advocacy of a "just war"?