Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, you joined us last year to do the reading we are doing today, so I am glad the Presiding Officer is here presiding today.

It is an honor to join my colleagues of both parties on the floor today to read Dr. King's letter from the Birmingham jail. I thank Senator Cassidy, who will go first, and Senators Casey, Lankford, King, Britt, and Butler, who will wrap it up, for joining me today for this annual bipartisan tradition.

Every year, we bring together three Republicans and three Democrats to read one of the greatest pieces of writing of the 20th century and reflect on the mission and the powerful words of Dr. King.

This year, our reading falls right after Workers' Memorial Day, which we marked on Sunday, a day when we honor all the workers killed on the job over the past year, workers who were injured, and workers who were injured and killed throughout our history.

Every year on that date, I am reminded of Dr. King's final trip--his second trip of the year, his final trip--to Memphis. He went to stand with Black sanitation workers striking for better pay and safer working conditions. They were some of the most exploited workers in the country, with unfair wages and unsafe conditions.

Months earlier, two Black workers had been killed in a tragic accident that surely could have been prevented. Mr. Echol Cole and Mr. Robert Walker had showed up to work in segregated Memphis, working in a segregated neighborhood. During their shift, a storm hit. Mr. Cole and Mr. Walker had to huddle in the back of the truck, surrounded by garbage, to shield themselves from the rain.

Segregated Memphis. Segregated neighborhood. Segregated sanitation truck, I might add.

The truck malfunctioned. These two young men--36 and 30 years old, with wives and families and their whole lives ahead of them--were crushed. The White workers in the front of the cab were not, obviously.

Dr. King knew discrimination killed those men as much as their work conditions had. He understood the deep connections between civil rights and worker rights. He understood that all labor has dignity.

Until we have equal rights for all and dignity for all workers, our work remains unfinished. We have a long road left to travel. It is up to each of us to push our country further along that road. That is the message of Dr. King's words. That is why I ask my colleagues to join us on the floor every year.

He wrote on scraps of paper while in solitary confinement in April 1963 in the Birmingham jail, with only his memory to pull from. He referenced two texts again and again: the Bible and Howard Thurman--who was one of his important spiritual counselors--Howard Thurman's book ``Jesus and the Disinherited.''

My friend Dr. Otis Moss, who lives in Cleveland, told me Dr. King always carried these two books with him. Before every trip or speech or march, he packed them into his briefcase.

In his letter, Dr. King was responding to White moderate ministers who told him: Slow down. Don't move too fast. Don't demand too much all at once.

They told him wait and things would change, but Dr. King, at that point, knew better. He knew ``wait'' meant never. He knew progress only happens when you push and when you don't give up.

In the letter, Dr. King made that point more eloquently and persuasively than any of us ever could.

Senator Cassidy--Dr. Cassidy--was just standing here with Senator Butler and me marveling at the wisdom and the skill of his words, all inspiring us to write better on our account too.

The reading begins with Senator Cassidy of Louisiana. Thank you for joining us again this year.

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Mr. BROWN. Continuing:

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 good will 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 to 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 co workers 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 and a 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.

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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I thank my colleagues from California and Alabama, Louisiana and Maine, from Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.

I urge my colleagues who weren't listening today to read the letter, Dr. King's letter from Birmingham jail. It inspires us today as it helped to move a nation almost 61 years ago.

Cloture Motion

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