[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.
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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
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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,