[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 12 (Monday, January 22, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E170-E171]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         OBSERVING THE BIRTHDAY OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                         HON. JAMES E. CLYBURN

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 16, 2007

  Mr. CLYBURN. Madam Speaker, every year at this time I read the 
``Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
and after these many decades, it still brings new inspiration and 
insight with every read.
  As I consider the challenges we face nationally and internationally, 
I am struck by Dr. King's words, ``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.''
  Let us break our silence in Congress and across this country on the 
issues of poverty, education, health care, and Iraq among other things. 
The people of good will must join together to provide for the common 
good.
  I would like to submit a truncated version of Dr. Martin Luther 
King's ``Letter from a Birmingham Jail'' to the Record in the hopes 
that we can all move forward with the social consciousness Dr. King 
preached of.

               Excerpts From 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 statements 
     in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms . . .
       Author's Note: This response to a published statement by 
     eight fellow clergymen from Alabama (Bishop C. C. J. 
     Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Hilton L. Grafman, 
     Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Holan B. Harmon, the Reverend 
     George M. Murray, the Reverend Edward V. Ramage and the 
     Reverend Earl Stallings) was composed under somewhat 
     constricting circumstance. Begun on the margins of the 
     newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in 
     jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper 
     supplied by a friendly Negro trusty, and concluded on a pad 
     my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me. Although 
     the text remains in substance unaltered, I have indulged in 
     the author's prerogative of polishing it for publication.
       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 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 . . .
       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 with with-drawl 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 
     . . .
       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 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 dark 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 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 know 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 . 
     . .
       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 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 . . .
       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

[[Page E171]]

     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 
     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.
       We be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist 
     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, Jeans 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 . . .
       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 vi 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 . . .
       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 about her weariness: ``My 
     fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest.'' They 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 . . .
       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.

                          ____________________