OT
Dear High Tech, I apologize for the long delay in my response. I am very embarrassed because
I had no idea of the contents in your post. At one time on SI, you use to be able to read a
post and it would remain in your inbox until you responded. The only disadvantage is that
sometimes I wouldn't answer a post right away. Nowadays, if you
read it, and if you don't answer it immediately, the post goes to your trash.
B4, I answered your post, I wanted to familiarize myself with other King speeches,
and I've tried very hard to follow this last election. I spent much of my adult life in another
country so this is the first US Presidential election that I've followed closely.
Talladega? We knew someone who taught at Talladega at one time!
I want to congratulate you and your wife for what you have done in memory of Dr. King.
I've felt very sad about this past election because I have read that so many black and other minority
voters were denied the right to vote. Surely, this injustice must stop. It is so difficult to believe that the
practice continues so many years after Dr. King's death.
I believe he wrote the speech about segregation from Birmingham Jail in 1963!
Here are some excerpts.
Excerpts from King in Birmingham Jail
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.
Just 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, we 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
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:
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain 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……,
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 justice denied."
We have waited .for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights……..
….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
our 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-county 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 no 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. 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 won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?"
The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just
and unjust. I would be the Brat 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 distort 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-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.
Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich 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 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 ace 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 law. Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience……
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" "….. |
