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504 Cannon House Office Building · Washington, DC 20515
For Immediate Release Martin Luther King and a Promise Made Good
By
Congressman Joseph R. Pitts On
April 16, 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was in jail.
He was in trouble for “parading without a permit” in
Birmingham, Alabama. As
he sat there in jail, he read a newspaper column by seven Christian
clergy and a rabbi, criticizing him for stirring up trouble. They said that they sympathized with his cause, but felt that
his actions were “unwise and untimely.”
With plenty of time on his hands, he began to write a
response. All he had
was the newspaper, so he began writing in the margins.
He continued on scraps of paper supplied by a friend and then
on a pad that his attorney was able to get him. His
now-famous “Letter from the Birmingham City Jail” is an amazing
document. It isn’t
amazing because it contains new ideas or because it fans
revolutionary flames. It’s
an amazing letter because it does just the opposite.
It appeals to the past, to the Declaration of Independence
and the principles of the Founders, and insists that America be
honest about what those principles mean.
Just as the Founding Fathers had insisted on “the rights of
Englishmen,” King insisted on “the rights of Americans.” King’s
argument was very simple. Speaking
for all African-Americans, he argued: We are Americans. Americans have certain inalienable rights.
We are being denied those rights.
Therefore something is wrong which needs to be fixed. The
eight editorializing clergymen criticized King for being an
extremist. Using an
interesting juxtaposition, he accepted that label, but at the same
time insisted that his ideas were as traditional as motherhood and
apple pie. He
appealed, exclusively, to commonly-held American beliefs.
He believed in equal justice under law.
He believed that all men are created equal.
He demanded that those principles be made realities, a demand
that—to the South of his day—seemed unreasonable. He
wrote: “…as I continued to think about the matter I gradually
gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist for love—‘Love your enemies,
bless them that curse you….’
Was not Martin Luther an extremist—‘Here I stand; I can
do none other, so help me God.’… 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 extremists for love?
Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or
will we be extremists for the cause of justice?” Just
four months later, King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
and told us that he had a Dream.
He said, “I have a dream that my four children will one day
live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their
skin, but by the content of their character.” He
said to the crowd, “In a sense we have come to our nation’s
capital to cash a check. When
the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing
a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the
inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” Martin
Luther King wanted America to make good on its promise. # # # |
