[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.

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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.

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