Martin Luther King Jr. - Letter From Birmingham Jail - Episode 1 - Dr. King Reaches Out Of His Jail Cell To Touch The Heart Of A Nation!

I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast. Today we are going to start a three part series on a man who changed the landscape of political protesting- demonstrating that positive change can occur without massive loss of life. He won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was 35 years old, at the time he was the youngest to ever receive the award. His life became synonymous with civil disobedience- taking it farther than Thoreau ever dreamed possible. He radically and controversially claimed the role of a Christian political resister was not only the role to resist injustice. This was not enough, to be successful one must accompany resistance with love- loving the persecutor- a claim that would be put to the test over and over and for which he would be martyred. On Jan 20, 1986, the US Federal Government proclaimed a national holiday commemorating his life and message. Today over 955 (that number is likely small), but there are at least 955 major street, boulevards and thoroughfares that carry his name not only across the United States but across the world. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we are talking about the life, literature and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Specifically, the iconic letter that moved a nation from apathy to change, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” It was written on April 16, 1963 and famously addressed to “My Dear Fellow Clergyman.”

Indeed, and yet, so many students or really people, who hear that name know so little about the movement itself. Growing up first in our nation’s capital, Washington DC and then Brazil, I’d heard of Dr. King. I knew he stood for non-violence, but I ignorantly thought he literally just walked around preaching and protesting, carrying signs, singing and marching. I had NO idea how calculated the entire Civil Rights moment was. I had no idea the amount of strategy and genius that went into the planning and execution of one of the most effective non-violent movements in the world- or even how many years it was in the making. I just thought, Dr. King got up one day and just started protesting.

Well, I think most people don’t, even people of good faith who try to mimic some of his basic strategies. It’s really difficult to wrap our minds around the complexity involved, not to mention the sheer power of King’s personal rhetorical charisma that carried the movement from a few thousand African-American Christian protesters in Montgomery, Alabama to 250,000 people of all ethnicities and faith and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The changes in legislation and the implementation of laws that had been allowed to be ignored for a century were a direct result of this movement we are discussing over the next few episodes.

So, let’s get started beginning with some terminology that we hear when it comes to Civil Rights, words that many of us who aren’t originally from the South may not be familiar with- for example what are Jim Crow laws. Who was Jim Crow and what are his laws?

Sure. Jim Crow was not a real person. He was a character created by a famous white comedian in the 1850s. This white comedian painted his face black with charcoal and called himself Jim Crow and did comedy- it’s what today we call black face and, of course, is derogatory and highly offensive. That term later was adopted to refer to the laws that went into effect starting in the 1880s-these laws, of course, are also derogatory and highly offensive- so the term remains appropriate. They refer to legislation that specifically targeted African-Americans to keep them from upward social mobility and fully participating in American life with the rest of the mostly white population. Let me remind you that all of this occurred AFTER the end of the Civil War and after the Union troops left the South where they had been forcing Southern cities to integrate against their will under the direction of President Ulysses Grant- this period has been called Reconstruction. After 1877 Reconstruction ended partly because the North was exhausted from trying to enforce the rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments. The north abandoned the South and the south will remain a third world part of the country for decades to come. Jim Crow laws stayed in effect literally all the way until success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Let me give you an example, in 1891, 25 years after the Civil War,Georgia became the first Southern state to pass a Jim Crow law. The Georgia legislature passed a law that railroads had to provide equal but separate accommodations for black and white passengers. In other words, the African Americans would not be allowed to sit with the white Americans. After this first attempt at dividing the races was allowed- there soon were others- there began to be black and white bathrooms, black and white water fountains, hospitals, schools, swimming pools, prisons, barber shops, parks, movie theaters, sports arenas, telephone booths, lunch counters, libraries even graveyards. In his letter Dr. King refers to these signs as “nagging”- that of course is an understatement. They were degrading and psychologically damaging. Racism in the United States during the Jim Crow period was worse than in any other period of history, including today. There was a famous case, Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896- five years after that first sign in Georgia- that created a legal precedent saying that these laws were okay- The courts said that if the facilities were equal then it was not illegal for people to be separated by race. This was a blow to African-Americans as well as the railroad industry actually, which didn’t want to segregate their railcars. It was an enormous financial burden- beyond being offensive and unnecessary- they now had to provide two of everything. But Jim Crow laws went on for years, and of course the facilities were never equal, but even if they had been, the message was still derogatory, and the entire system obviously unjust which caused many advocates of social equality both African-American as well as white to continue to mobilize and advocate for change.

During WW2, President Harry Truman desegregated the US military in 1947, which was a huge advance in Civil Rights. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional sports in 1947, but it wasn’t until 1954 that there would be another landmark ruling of the Supreme Court that would address this issue. In 1954, in a case known as Brown versus Topeka Board of Education, lawyers Richard Ellis and Michael Birzer successfully argued that things were separate but not equal, and in fact, the facilities for black children in schools were always inferior. In a unanimous decision, the court agreed saying that separate learning facilities were by their very definition unequal and this had a detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority. This was a big deal. The legal precedent had been set. This was the finally justice in the courts, but now, how does that play out in classrooms across the country. Who is going to force almost half the schools in the United States to integrate students of both races? And when would they be required to make this happen? In every state in the South, Segregation was actually the law- a school couldn’t have been integrated even if they had wanted to. Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas was the first southern school to even attempt integration in 1957. So, The short answer is -not immediately.

Well, and as Dr. King pointed out in his letter, entire African nations were being decolonized faster than American students were being allowed to integrate in local schools.

And it is here that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national recognition emerges. At the young age of 26, he is newly married and has recently moved to accept a job as the pastor of the Dexter Street Baptist Church in the southern town of Montgomery, Alabama. It would be here that he would meet another seemingly inconspicuous woman but powerful woman by the name of Rosa Parks. Together, they were about to change their world.

So as we set this up, let’s introduce Dr. King’s life before entering the political scene in 1956- and let’s try to keep the dates straight- that’s kind of hard for those of us for whom numbers don’t come naturally. So, Dr. King was born in 1929 in an upper-middle class African-American family in Atlanta, Georgia. One interesting detail was that his birth name was Michael.

That’s right, his father later changed his name to Martin Luther, perhaps because of a trip he made to Germany to study the great theologian who also changed the political landscape of his day during the ProtestantReformation, but that is still slightly speculative.

His father was a very popular Baptist pastor, the pastor of the successful and well-established Ebenezer Baptist Church. King was privileged to have received a high level of education- likely one of the most educated Southern African-Americans at this time period. He attended the very elite Morehouse College there in Atl, and then Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania and finally Boston University. So, you can see, he had the opportunity to ignore the plight of the majority of African-Americans. He had job offers at various universities in prestigious locations. Another important point to notice is that while in Boston he met a rising star vocalist by the name of Coretta Scott, and he fell in love with her. They got married in 1955. It wasn’t long after that, he took the pastorate in the much smaller town of Montgomery, Alabama and moved their with Coretta and their baby, _______. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, btw, is located just a stone’s throw from the state capitol building in Montgomery- the heart of state government. Then, on December 1, 1955, something happened that changed Dr. King’s life forever as well as the entire world. A woman by the name of Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white gentleman on a bus. She had entered the bus through the front door instead of the back door, as required by those Jim Crow laws.

This hadn’t been an accident, the practice of forcing women to give up their seats had been going on for years, and several women protested to no avail, but for the highly and morally reputable Rosa Parks, it would be different. The national spot light was heading her way- but it wasn’t accidental. This was a highly intentional and strategic play.

Let me go back and say, Dr. King had personal experience with being forced to stand against his will on a bus. When he was in high school, he won a speaking contest in a town 90 miles outside of Atlanta. He and the teacher who went with him to the contest were riding on a bus back to Atlanta, super excited when white passenger got on. The white bus driver ordered King and his teacher to give up their seats, and cursed them. King wanted to stay seated, but his teacher urged him to obey the law. They had to stand in the aisle for the 90 miles back home. King stated later that that was the angriest he had ever felt in his life. If you can imagine. So, of course he could understand emotionally as well as cognitively what was happening every day in buses in Montgomery, Alabama as well as across the South. But what do you do? That’s the question. Later on in Dr. King’s life, someone asked him that very question- how do you manage your anger. I want to quote King here, "A destructive passion is harnessed by directing that same passion into constructive channels." And that’s what he did in this case.

Yes- next very next day, after Park’s arrest, on December 2 ministers, including a man by the name of Rev. Ralph Abernathy who would be the one to go to jail with Dr. King, met at King’s church to organize and publicize a bus boycott. Relying in part on Dr. King’s eloquence, they mobilized the African-American community almost in full. On December 5, 90 percent of Montgomery’s African-American citizens stayed off the buses. Dr. King was also elected as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association or the MIA- the organization spearheading the boycott. According to Rosa Parks, the reason they chose King to be the president of the MIA was because he was so new to Montgomery, no one knew him. He had no friends but also no enemies.

The evening that Dr. King spoke at Holt Street Baptist Church, this is what he said. “I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong”.

And what is striking is that when you see what they were demanding, these demands are not crazy, they are not even unrealistic or difficult to implement. They wanted courteous treatment by bus operators, first come first serve seating on public buses, and they wanted African-American bus drivers to be hired to work the routes that were in areas where mostly African-Americans were living. The demands were not met, and the boycott went on for 13 months- now think about that, even in the South, that is a lot of walking in a lot of bad weather for a long time. And this came at a huge personal cost to the thousands of African-Americans who were working or studying all over Birmingham but living across town in the segregated section for African Americans. Large complex carpool systems were created of over 300 cars to support the boycotters. People with cars offered rides to the walkers. The city government resisting, going so far as to punish African-American taxi drivers for offering rides at reduced rates. 80 leaders of the boycott were jailed under an old law from the twenties for “conspiracy that interfered with lawful business.” King himself was tried, convicted and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail. King’s house was bombed while he was at church. On the day of the bombing, King rushed home to see that Coretta and his baby were okay. This would not be the last big test on his ability to remain non-violent, but it was an important moment in his public career. Many people were outraged that someone had cowardly tried to murder the family of their leader, and they showed up on his porch with weapons ready to defend King and go after the assailant. King, although still personally affected, famously and calmly stood on his front porch and told everyone to go home. The mandate of Jesus was to love their enemies.

So, when he talks about loving your enemies in his letter, he’s. not just saying these things. He lived this idea and practiced it risking his own life, the life of his wife and the lives of his children. He believed so deeply in the life of Jesus Christ in the power of redemptive love through Jesus Christ that he put his life on the line. A point I want to make because it is something that I have thought about and he speaks to is what to do with the anger. How do you avoid the inevitable hate that has to emerge in your heart? I don’t care who you are or what your religious faith is- the hate and rage and anger are justifiable and unavoidable. Of course, I’m not the first person to have this question and Dr. King spoke about that many many times later on during his life. I’m not sure he had a working theory at the age of 26. But by the time he was writing books, he did have an articulate vision on how this could work. For Dr. King, anger was a part of a process. It IS part of the process. He said you have anger then forgiveness then redemption then love. That was the order. It is what he believed and that is what he practiced to the best of his ability- although, and he speaks to this honestly in his biographical work, he struggled with anger his whole life.

Well, the Montgomery Boycott as well as King’s trial got national new coverage. A man by the name of Glenn Smiley visited Montgomery and offered King advice and training on Gandhian techniques of nonviolence. These two men discussed how to apply Ghandian techniques to American race relations.

King later said, ““Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work”. King and his team would combine Ghandhi’s methods with Christian ethics to create a model for challenging segregation all over the South.

So, follow the chronology- On June 5th, 1956, remember, Parks was arrested on Dec 1st, but by the beginning of June, the federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. That’s HUGE but not the last word- in the United States, people have a right to go up the chain to the next court to see if a different court will overrule the first one. Since this was a possibility, The boycott could not nor did not end until December 20, 1956 when the case made its all through the appeal process all the way to the final court- the Supreme Court- when the decision was NOT overturn- then the boycott ended. The boycott lasted for a total of 381 days, if you can imagine.

And here’s a fun side- note- The day after it ended- Ralph Abernathy, Ed Nixon and Glenn Smiley- now let me add that Glenn Smiley is white- but these three men got on an integrated bus together- for the very first time- how satisfying would that have been.

King famously had this to say about the boycott: “We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So … we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery”. 

You can already see that metaphorical language that he’s so famous for in both his speaking and writing.

True and speaking of writing, he wrote up his experiences from Montgomery in a book called Stride to Freedom and in 1958, set out on a book tour across the United States. He wasn’t as famous obviously as he would eventually become, but he was a well-known figure. On September 20, 1958, a 42 year old apparently deranged African-American woman plunged a letter-opener into his chest.

So, Dr. King’s methods were not always well-received by either side.

No- Non-violence is controversial because it’s obviously unfair. Why do I have to practice non-violence when the opposing side is not? It’s a fair question and one which King spent his lifetime discussing. Non-violence is paradoxical – it doesn’t seem like it would work. Its power lies in its ability to contrast so sharply with violence that you strip away any pretense that the violence is justified. It’s also very slow. You have to have a tremendous amount of patience, trust, and stubbornness.

And King was moving forward- but he was absolutely fed up with the pace of the federal court system. Remember, the courts mandated that schools be integrated in 1954, but still, here they were in 1963, nine years after Brown vs. Board of Education, and only 9% of African-American students were attending integrated schools.

1963 was going to be the year. 1963 was the 100 year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation- the day Lincoln pronounced that slaves were no longer slaves- for Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Fred Abernathy and the thousands of others willing to put their lives on the line- 100 years was enough time- and the chosen place for this confrontation of forces and will would be Birmingham, Alabama. Garry, why Birmingham? This was not a coincidence. This movement was not spontaneous; it did not just blow up. It was planned and as Julius Caesar would tell you - selecting the location for the confrontation is key to success. is

Well, Dr. King tells us in his writings. The whole thing was highly orchestrated. Birmingham was the largest industrial city of the South. It had been a symbol of bloodshed in the past when African-American trade unions tried to form there. Because it was an industrial city, the financial interests and the political interests were intertwined. Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the United States- the entire city was an expression of Jim Crow- from hospitals to schools to parks to jobs to everything. Brutality towards African-Americans was an undisputed reality headed up by a man who prided on keeping African Americans, to use his words, “in their place.” His name was Eugene, but this man, the Commissioner of Public Safety went by the nick Name, Bull- Mr. Bull Connor. Under his reign or leadership depending on how you view his leadership, between 1957-1963 there had been 17 unsolved bombings of African-American churches and homes of Civil Rights leaders. Bull Connor was so radical that one time a white United States Senator visited Birmingham to give a give a speech and was arrested because he walked through the door marked, “Colored.” This guy was ruthless, and he ruled both African-Americans and whites alike with fear. He was accompanied and supported by a segregationist governor- Governor George Wallace who is famous for saying at his inauguration, “Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!”

Goodness, history likely does not shine favorably on these remarks.

No, nor on any of these defenders of segregation, of which Bull Connor was one of the most publicly vicious, but I will say, Bull Connor played a very important role in disrupting segregation because he played the part of the villain so well and so predictably. He was the perfect foil. After it was all over, JFK famously told MLK at the White House following the signing of the Birmingham agreement, “Our judgement of Bull Connor should not be too harsh, after all, in his way, he has done a good deal for civil-rights legislation this year.” Connor was the absolute perfect foil for nonviolent protest.

Meaning, he was so terrible, it became morally obvious to any fool who was right and who was wrong.

Exactly, and after it was all said and done, President Kennedy could say that, but in April of 1963, that was not so obvious. Bull was on a rampage; he was in control; and he was winning. On the third of April in 1963, segregationist Albert Boutwell became the new mayor of Birmingham. Mr. Boutwell was a likeable person; he was not like Bull Connor so some people thought he was the better choice. They were even glad he had won, but in the words of Fred Shuttlesworth, he was nothing but a “dignified Bull Connor.”

Now, you’re starting to throw out some names that will show up in the letter.

Yes, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was one of the local leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Remember, he had been involved in Montgomery. He had organized an organization called the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, otherwise known as the ACHR. Now, this becomes important because as we’re going to read in a minute, Dr. King is accused of being an outsider and meddling into somebody else’s business and starting trouble. To which he is going to respond that he was invited to come, and Reverend Shuttlesworth is one of the local leaders who had invited him. All of this becomes very important in understanding the context of the letter. So, at this time, the ACHR was holding weekly meeting in churches all over Birmingham. At these meetings they were mobilizing African-Americans to boycott business that displayed jim crow signs, or refused to hire African American workers except as janitorial staff. As a result, many stores and businessess around town were losing as much as 40% of their business. Shuttlesworth, became a problem for the status quo, and as a result, he had been jailed, his home AND his church both had been bombed.

In the now famous room 30 of the Gaston hotel, Abernathy and King among others launched what they called “Project C”. The goal was to pressure Birmingham businesses to integrate and remove those horrible Jim Crow signs that said “White Only” or “Colored”. The intense boycotts and demonstrations were to start on the first week of March and would continue all until April 14, which was Easter and the Easter season is a big season for shopping, especially for clothes.

What is interesting to me, and something I think is lost on a lot of students, is that they didn’t just go around and drum up angry people to hold up signs and such, they required them to participate in workshops and daily evening meetings.

Everything that happened in these weekly and later nightly meetings was intentional. Everything had a purpose. They would start the mass meetings by singing old negro spirituals they called freedom songs. These songs were adaptations from the same negro spirituals slaves had sung 100 years previously. These songs were old and inspirational, they had been transformed from songs of sorrow song by one’s great-grandparents to becoming battle hymns.

Singing together is psychologically bonding under any circumstances, but the power of the history of the music as well as the spirituality of the songs is difficult to explain in words.

Every single volunteer was required to sign a commitment card where they would pledge their body and soul to nonviolence in the face of violence. This was explained in full. They developed ten commandments. The first commandment was to daily meditate on the teachings of Jesus Christ. The 8th was to refrain from violence of fist, tongue or heart.

Yes, the idea was the prepare every person psychologically to expect and withstand abuse. When they started to march, when they entered a restaurant labled whites only in a to sit-in, when they were arrested, they needed to be prepared to do what they had been trained to do- resist peacefully. It is counter-intuitive to human nature. On April 6th, they marched orderly two by two without banners or singing. Bull Connor, right on cue, emerged and arrested 42 marchers for “parading without a permit”.

And this became the pattern. After ten days, between 400-500 people were sitting in jail. Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy decided that on Good Friday, they would lead the demonstration and submit to being arrested, as they most assuredly would be. They left their church and walked with around 50 others – they had been denied a permit to march, so they were guilty of parading without a permit. Of course, that day when Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy began walking down the street in Birmingham, Alabama, many bystanders lined the streets. The marchers began to sing. The bystanders joined in the singing and sometimes burst into applause. As if on cue, Bull Connor emerged, his officers grabbed Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy by the back of their shirts and hauled them off to jail. Dr. King was held in solitary confinement for over 24 hours. Not even a lawyer was allowed to visit with him. He was not allowed to telephone his wife. Several violations of civil liberties all at once.

Coretta, by Monday, stressed out of her mind, placed a call to President Kennendy. It wasn’t but a few minutes from her trying to contact the president that his brother Robert Kennedy, who was at that time the Attorney General of the United States, called her back promising to intervene. The president called himself a few hours later. He called the officials in Birmingham, and amazingly the conditions of Dr. King’s imprisonment changed significantly.

He was in jail for eight days, and it was during that time, that a public letter was written to him and signed by 8 leading clergyman in Alabama.

Again, these men have their names signed on the wrong side of history and this has to be embarrassing at this point. But, oh well, they wrote a public letter- and on the surface this letter sounds so reasonable. It is another example of someone saying something cruel in the nicest way possible. It is accusatory- in a polite way- and it enrages Dr. King. We started the podcast today talking about what do you do when you are enraged- really righteously enraged- this is what Dr. King did- he channeled this energy to become this laser-sharp rhetorical monster and it became uncontainable. Let’s read the public letter written by these fellow clergymen, and then let’s begin Dr. King’s response that changed the world.

What are some of the things we need to highlight- first of all- what are their main points

King is an outsider= he’s come from the outside to agitate

They acknowledge that they understand why he might feel impatience, but they are encouraging him to let the system work and not incite unrest. They should trust the courts.

They go so far as to commend the police- remember that is Bull Connor.

Yes- and this is to a man who’s family has been targeted to be murdered and arrested unfairly.

Exactly, before we read his response- let’s look at who signed it.

Read the names and where they are from

When Dr. King responds to these ministers- he makes it a point to cite a theologian from each of these specific religious traditions, and may I point out that he does it from memory since he is in a jail cell.

Next week, we will analyze and discuss how he systematically demolishes the specious arguments and challenges on principles of Judeo-Christian faith the inconsistencies in the words and lives of “My Dear fellow clergyman”.

Okay, we have a lot to look forward to. I hope you have enjoyed this discussion on the background of this important piece of American literature and history. As always, thank you flr listening, if you feel so inspired, please give us a five star rating on your podcast app. Connect with us on social media be it fb, insta, twitter or linked in. Also, if you are an educator, check out our instructional materails on our website. Howtolovelitpodcast.com

Peace Out

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