Letter from a Birmingham Jail King, Jr. April 1. 96. 3My Dear Fellow Clergymen While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement. Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would. I would have no. constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your. I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient. I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced. I have the honor of serving as president. Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern. Cast, crew, users comments and related links. Inside the mansion and mind of Kim Dotcom, the most wanted man on the net. On Tuesdays CBS This Morning, Meghan Trainor who won the GRAMMY for Best New Artist earlier this year announced live the nominees for Best New Artist, Record. Land And Freedom Movie Watch Online' title='Land And Freedom Movie Watch Online' />Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across. Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share. Several months ago the affiliate. Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. I was invited here. I am here. organizational ties here. But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets. Watch tv series on demand episodes complete seasons american and british online television shows shows. Low monthly subscription. No ads. The StarSpangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from Defence of Fort MHenry, a poem written on September 14. B. C. left their villages and carried their thus saith the Lord far beyond. Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried. Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian. Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I. cannot sit idly. Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we. Anyone who lives inside the United States. You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am. I am. sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social. It is unfortunate that. Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the. Negro community with no alternative. In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps collection of the facts to. We have gone. these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United. States. Its ugly. She Made Them Do It Full Movie In English. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of. these conditions. Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently. Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birminghams. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the. On the basis of these promises. Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we. A few signs, briefly removed, returned the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked. Are. you able to accept blows without retaliating Are you able to endure the ordeal of. We decided. to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for. Christmas, this is. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program. Then it occurred to us that Birminghams mayoral election was coming up in March, and. When we discovered that the. Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene Bull Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated. end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we. You may well ask Why direct action Why sit ins, marches and so forth Isnt. You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension. It. dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as. But I must confess that I am. I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of. Just as Socrates felt that it was. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it. I therefore concur with you in your call for. Too. long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue. One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates. Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked Why didnt you give the new city. The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham. We are sadly. feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to. Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists. I have hope that Mr. Watch Quo Vadis? Online there. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to. But he will not see this without pressure. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that. Individuals may see the moral light and. Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action. For years now I have heard the word Wait It rings in the ear of every Negro with. This Wait has almost always meant Never. We must come to see, with one of our. We have waited for more than 3. God given rights. The. nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political. Wait. But. seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and. Negro brothers smothering in an. Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of. Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean when you. John, and your wife. Mrs. when you are harried by day and haunted. Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Courts. One may well ask How can you advocate breaking some laws and. The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws just and unjust. I. would be the first. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Now, what is the difference between the two How does one determine whether a law is. A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of. 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. human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All. segregation statutes. It gives the. a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation. terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an I it relationship for. Hence segregation is. Paul. Tillich has said. Is not segregation an existential expression of mans tragic. Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1. Supreme Court, for it is morally right and I can urge them to disobey segregation. Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as. Who can say. legislature of Alabama which set up that states segregation laws was democratically. Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming. Negroes constitute a.