[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 64 (Wednesday, April 14, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1917-S1921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



      Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from the Birmingham Jail

  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, it is an honor to join my colleagues of 
both parties, starting with Reverend Warnock and five--two other 
Democrats and three other Republicans on the floor today to read one of 
the great pieces of writing of the 20th century, Dr. King's letter from 
the Birmingham jail.
  I thank Senator Warnock and Senators Murkowski, Republican from 
Alaska; Toomey, Republican from Pennsylvania; Padilla, our new 
colleague from California, a Democrat; Senator Cortez Masto, in her 
fifth year in the Senate, a Democrat from the Presiding Officer's home 
State of Nevada; and Senator Cassidy from Louisiana, a Republican. They 
will be joining me today for this annual tradition.
  Our former colleague, Doug Jones from Alabama, began this reading 3 
years ago. I joined him on the floor. He asked me last year after his 
election to carry on this tradition in the years ahead. I am honored to 
take that responsibility because Dr. King's words are as powerful, as 
beautiful, and as relevant as ever.
  One of many, many, many incisive things that Dr. King said was that 
we live in a 10-day world where people forget about public events 10 
days later. Not so for him, not so for his words, and certainly not so 
from the letter from the Birmingham jail.
  Twelve years after Dr. King's assassination, when Cesar Chavez was 
thrown in jail, Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, said:

       You cannot keep truth in . . . jail. . . . Truth and 
     justice leap barriers, and in their own way, reach the 
     conscience of the people.

  She said that is what Dr. King said, were his words.
  In April 1963, Dr. King was detained at the Birmingham jail for 
leading a series of peaceful protests and boycotts. The goal was to put 
pressure on the business community to end discrimination in hiring for 
local jobs.
  Some White ministers from Alabama had taken issues with his boycotts. 
They supported civil rights, they said. They told him to slow down, 
don't move too fast, and don't demand too much all at once. Dr. King, 
of course, as we know, rejected that premise.
  That is what this letter is all about. It is about demanding justice 
now. We can't wait around and hope the problems in families' lives will 
solve themselves. It is up to all of us as citizens, as leaders, as 
members of our churches and our communities to get to work.
  Dr. King made that point more eloquently and more persuasively, 
certainly, than I can, but we will read this note--we will read his 
words. Senator Warnock will begin, followed by Senator Murkowski and 
four other Senators.
  Senator Warnock.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. WARNOCK. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague, Senator 
Brown, for bringing us together in this way, reading from a letter from 
a Birmingham jail by Dr. King, April 16, 1963. Dr. King writes:

       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 working ideas. 
     If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my 
     desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything 
     other than such correspondence in the course of a day, and I 
     would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel 
     you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are 
     sincerely set forth, I will 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 home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to 
     the Macedonian call for aid.

[[Page S1918]]

       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.
       In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 
     collection of the facts to determine whether injustices 
     exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We 
     have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be 
     no gainsaying 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 than 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 the 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-withdrawal 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 mayoral 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 ``Bull'' 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 our direct 
     action program could be delayed no longer.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I continue the reading of the letter 
from Birmingham jail:

       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. Such 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 half truths 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 a 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 
     than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to 
     the 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 than 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 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 just 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 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 
     policeman 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 
     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 [an 
     expletive], your middle named 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 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.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Madam President, I will continue the reading of 
Martin Luther King's letter from the Birmingham jail.

       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 well 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 though'' relationship and

[[Page S1919]]

     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 it is 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 a 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 its 
     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 the 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 antireligious laws.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. BROWN. Madam President, continuing the reading of the letter from 
the Birmingham jail.

       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 Counciler 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 goodwill is more frustrating than 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 its 
     ugliness for 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 relation 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 that 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 
     this 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 coworkers with God, and without this hard work, 
     time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social 
     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 clergymen 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 in 
     the 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 close 
     to 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 black nationalist 
     ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a 
     frightening racial nightmare.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana
  Mr. CASSIDY.

       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

[[Page S1920]]

     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 through 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. 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 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, 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 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 
     niggerlovers.'' 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.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California
  Mr. PADILLA. Madam President, I thank Senator Brown for including me 
on this reading. It is a tremendous honor. I will continue.

       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 
     white 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 other worldly 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 of 
     Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and 
     nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a 
     clarion call for 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. There can 
     be no deep disappointment where there is not deep 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 God 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 
     arch defender 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 too 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

[[Page S1921]]

     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 at present are 
     misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in 
     Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of 
     America is freedom.

  Mr. TOOMEY. Continuing the reading of a letter from a Birmingham 
jail.

       Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up 
     with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at 
     Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched 
     the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across 
     the pages of history, 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 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. 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 have so 
     warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs 
     sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. 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 old 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 demonstrators. 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 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 perhaps 
     even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. 
     Perhaps, Mr. Connor and his policemen had 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 of racial injustice. As T. S. Elliot 
     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 with 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 Judeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation 
     back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by 
     the founding founders 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 clergymen 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,