Politics > Politics-USA > Martin Luther King Is For Everybody, Not Just Black People; His Powerful Ideas Can Guide Us All TodayHis "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail" Is Now Available Online, Public Domain, With Complete Text And An MP3 Voice Reading
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22 Mar 2006 06:53:42 PM |
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Martin Luther King Is For Everybody, Not Just Black People; His Powerful Ideas Can Guide Us All TodayHis "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail" Is Now Available Online, Public Domain, With Complete Text And An MP3 Voice Reading |
Martin Luther King Is For Everybody, Not Just Black People; His
Powerful Ideas Can Guide Us All Today.
His "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail" Is Now Available Online,
Public Domain, With Complete Text And An MP3 Voice Reading.
An HTML version of this message is located at
http://www.loveallpeople.org/martinlutherkingforeverybody.html
A few years ago, one of my co-workers (from another country) asked me
this question: "What did Martin Luther King actually do to deserve a
holiday in his name?"
My reply was this:
"Martin Luther King was the unquestioned leader of the American Civil
Rights movement during our period of transition from racial segregation
to integration. As a Christian minister, he taught non-violence, and
his leadership steered us safely through the changes without the kind
of catastrophic violence we might have had otherwise. He was willing to
risk his life for this cause, and his life was taken because of it. He
is a true hero to everyone who loves justice."
I didn't appreciate him at the time, during his ministry. I was a
know-it-all young white man from a segregated high school in Florida,
and I thought he was a dangerous trouble-maker and probably a
Communist. Only later did I realize how very important he had been, and
how much we all owed to him for leading us safely through those
perilous times, which could have turned into a disaster, but did not.
And only recently have I come to discern the Holy Spirit shining within
him, leading him every step of his way, even unto death.
Because he was so important to the struggle for racial integration in
the United States, it is easy to label him simply as a
"mid-twentieth-century American integrationist." But this vastly
understates his full importance as a brilliant social thinker for all
people, now and in the future. The racial situation in the USA in the
1950's and 1960's provided the setting for King himself to function and
succeed then and there. But His ideas are enduring and transferable to
us. They are valuable today in many different settings, and they can be
used by many different people. They are not at all limited to black
people in the United States in the mid twentieth century.
So how can we grasp the main ideas of Martin Luther King? And how can
we begin to apply these ideas to the problems facing us and all people
in the world today?
For me, the best place to start is by reading (and maybe memorizing)
his "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail." This letter was written by
King alone, over a period of a few days, apparently without notes,
while he was held prisoner in the Birmingham City Jail on charges
related to his activities in organizing an economic boycott in support
of racial desegregation. A prestigious group of mainstream religious
leaders had published a severe criticism of him and his methods, and
King was highly motivated to respond.
This powerful combination of emotional circumstances seems to have lit
a creative fire in King, and a wonderful outpouring of
perfectly-expressed ideas was the excellent result: "Letter From The
Birmingham City Jail." In this letter he outlines twelve of his most
important concepts, and he summarizes each of them in a few well-chosen
words.
1. THE INTER-CONNECTION OF ALL PEOPLE - "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."
2. A GENERAL METHOD OF ACTION FOR NONVIOLENT SOCIAL CHANGE - "In any
nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: (1) Collection of the
facts to determine whether injustices are alive; (2) Negotiation; (3)
Self-purification; and (4) Direct action."
3. THE CREATIVE TENSION OF DIRECT ACTION - "But I must confess that I
am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached
against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent
tension that is necessary for growth." "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." " . . . the
purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed
that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."
4. THE RIGHT TIME TO DO GOOD - "We must use time creatively, and
forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right." "Frankly I
have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed
.. . ."
5. THE GRANTING OF FREEDOM - "We know through painful experience that
freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be
demanded by the oppressed."
6. THE PURPOSE OF LAW AND ORDER - " . . . law and order exist for the
purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this
they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social
progress."
7. JUST AND UNJUST LAWS - " . . . there are two types of laws: There
are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to
advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but moral
responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint
Augustine that 'An unjust law is no law at all.' "
8. SOMETIMES WAITING MAKES THINGS WORSE - "It is the strangely
irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that
will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used
either destructively or constructively." "We must come to see that
human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes
through the tireless efforts and persistent work 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."
9. MODERATION AND LUKEWARM ACCEPTANCE - "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."
10. EXTREMISM FOR LOVE - "Was not Jesus an extremist in love? 'Love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that
despitefully use you.' Was not Amos an extremist for justice -- 'Let
justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.'
Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ -- 'I bear in
my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.' Was not Martin Luther an
extremist -- 'Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.' Was
not John Bunyan an extremist -- 'I will stay in jail to the end of my
days before I make a butchery of my conscience.' Was not Abraham
Lincoln an extremist -- 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half
free.' Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist -- 'We hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' So the question is
not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be.
Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will
we be extremists for the preservation of injustice -- or will we be
extremists for the cause of justice?"
11. ACTS WHICH MAY PRECIPITATE VIOLENCE - "In your statement you
asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned
because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically
made? Isn't this like condemning the 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 delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make
him drink the hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His
unique God consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will
precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as
federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge
an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional
rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect
the robbed and punish the robber."
12. THE HEROISM OF NONVIOLENCE - "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 the best in the American dream and the most
sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and thus carrying our
whole nation back to great wells of democracy which were dug deep by
the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence."
******
Letter Now Available, Public Domain, With MP3
The "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail" was handwritten by Martin
Luther King on April 16, 1963, then slipped out of the jail, turned
over to his assistants on the outside, typed, copied, and widely
disseminated to various organizations and individuals as an "open
letter" in order to generate public support for Dr. King and his civil
rights activities.
As an open letter, made available to the Public for publication without
restriction, it of course immediately entered the Public Domain and was
never thereafter eligible for copyright protection.
The first version of this letter which I could find was published with
King's approval and encouragement, without copyright notice, in May of
1963 by the American Friends Service Committee. It, too, is clearly in
the Public Domain. I have several reprints of it, and you can get them,
too, by purchasing them from
http://www.afsc.org/resources/items/birmingham_jail.htm .
At some later date, Dr. King revised this first version of the letter
and created a second version -- a more polished version, with numerous
minor changes -- which he then published, with copyright notice. It is
this second version which is now widely available in books and on the
Internet, with copyright now claimed by the heirs of the King estate.
So this second version is protected by copyright, but that copyright
does not apply to any of the first-version text which had already
entered into the Public Domain, only those parts which were new to the
second version. The second version shows a date of "April 16, 1963," in
the text, but that is the date of the handwritten original Public
Domain first version, not the date of the copyrighted second version.
I am now republishing this original Public Domain first version to the
Internet; and I am keeping it in the Public Domain. I could have edited
it, and written some comments, and placed my copyright notice on the
whole thing, thereby inhibiting its free and open dissemination.
Instead, I am encouraging all people to copy it freely, reprint it,
repost it, discuss it, critique it, and share it with all people
everywhere, as Dr. King originally intended forty-three years ago, when
he wrote it in jail and freely turned it loose into the world.
An HTML page with the complete text of the letter and its history is
located at
http://www.loveallpeople.org/letterfromthebirminghamcityjail.html
Public Domain.
An ASCII unformatted text version of the letter, Public Domain, is
located at http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/birminghamjail.txt
A HUGE MP3 file, also in the Public Domain, with 19.4 megs of data and
a forty-six minute playing time, is located at
http://www.text-to-speech.org/birminghamjail.mp3
with backup at http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/birminghamjail.mp3
An HTML version of this message is located at
http://www.loveallpeople.org/martinlutherkingforeverybody.html
Blessings to you. May God help us all.
Rev. Bill McGinnis, Director
LoveAllPeople.org
http://www.loveallpeople.org
.
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