Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer:King:Urgency and Hope from the Birmingham Jail
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:47:10 -0500 (EST)
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

The Spirit of King: Urgency and Hope from the Birmingham  Jail 
In 1963, Martin Luther King was not being celebrated with  a national 
holiday.  He was a  controversial figure who found himself in the Birmingham  
jail. 
While he was incarcerated, he wrote one of the most  remarkable letters in 
American history. 
It was written during a critical campaign of civil  disobedience, in 
response to another  letter published in the press from  moderate clergy who urged 
restraint on the civil rights movement.    The letter is an eloquent 
argument explaining “Why we can’t wait”.  But it is much  more. 
King dispatches all of the "moderate" arguments for  inaction and 
"patience."  He clearly paints the picture of what it is to be  the subject of 
discrimination and oppression.   He says, "We know  through painful experience 
that freedom is never voluntarily given by the  oppressor; it must be demanded 
by the oppressed….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.'" 
But then toward the end of his letter, after cataloging  the horrific 
treatment of African Americans, he does something quite  remarkable. 
King could easily have written a letter that was nothing  more than 
condemnation of hypocrisy and inaction….he could have focused on the  horrific 
record of European settlers in the New World—exterminating the Native  
Americans, enslaving African Americans.     
Instead he calls on all Americans to live up to the values  inherent in the 
other set of American traditions…the traditions that celebrate  equality 
and freedom.  
King believed that everyone has within him both a  potential for good and a 
potential for evil.  Rather than simply decrying  the potential for evil, 
or the evil itself, he sought to reawaken the potential  for good.   That is 
a key lesson that is absolutely necessary to make  America successful today, 
just as it  was in the 1960's. 
He closes his letter: 
"….I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in  Birmingham, even  
if our motives are at present misunderstood.   We will reach the goal  of 
freedom in Birmingham, and all over the  nation, because the goal of America is 
freedom.  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. 
 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…  “ 
"…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 of their 
scintillating beauty."  
"Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood."   
"Martin Luther King, Jr." 

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