There are no “outsiders” here -- op-ed by Stephanie J. Jones

story in the Washington Post -- Saturday, August 21, 2010; A13 --
op-ed written by Stephanie J. Jones

Lost in the furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero is a simple fact: The opposition to the center is the strongest argument in favor of it going right where it is planned. By most accounts, much of the opposition is based on an inaccurate conflation of Islam with terrorism, stemming from ignorance about the Muslim religion, culture and people. While troubling, this is hardly surprising in a nation in which a significant minority of Americans believe that our Christian president is Muslim (and so what if he were?).

Exiling the center to another part of Manhattan will expand and deepen the gulf between the Islamic community and its neighbors. The best way to bridge this gap is to help people understand that their trepidation is based not in reality but born of a myth that has been cruelly exploited. The Islamic cultural center can help span this chasm.

Of course, it's not fair to expect a minority community to educate the majority, especially when the majority is so hostile to it. Sadly, minorities have long shouldered the burden of proving to the majority that they pose no threat, that they are not inferior and that they, too, deserve everything the majority takes for granted as its due -- while patiently enduring misunderstanding and even abuse. They do all this in the face of demands that they are going too fast, pushing too hard and making life too uncomfortable for others.

That was the case in 1963 when white ministers in Birmingham, Ala., accused Martin Luther King Jr. of exacerbating racial tensions by leading protests against the city's segregation laws. They called his actions "unwise and untimely." Dr. King responded with his "Letter from Birmingham Jail,"( http://kirktanter.blogspot.com/search?q=letter+from+birmingham ) in which he wrote: "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.' "

Nearly 50 years later, it is Muslims who are being told to wait, to go away and remain out of sight until their presence can be tolerated by others. While much has changed in the past five decades, the drumbeat against the Islamic center echoes the calls of the well-meaning but misguided Birmingham ministers. Following in the footsteps of those who called for King and his "outsiders" to retreat, opponents of the cultural center urge that it be banished to another neighborhood because its presence near Ground Zero is unsettling and potentially dangerous.

But forcing the Islamic center out of sight will only allow ignorance and fear to fester and grow. It will keep more Americans from learning a lesson that King shared with the ministers: "Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

If the center is established in Lower Manhattan, the people most opposed to it now will eventually have a chance to learn that Muslims aren't the enemy. That they aren't dangerous or terrorists or even, in fact, outsiders. They are the lady who smiles at them in the grocery store; the teenager who roots for the Yankees; the little girl who plays with their daughter. Muslims are their neighbors. They are Americans. They are their friends.

The Islamic center needs to be right where it is planned because that's where human change will come about -- one parent, one child, one friend at a time. Instead of demanding that the Muslims get out, the residents of Lower Manhattan should be grateful that their fellow Americans are willing to stay put and make the effort, under difficult circumstances, to build bridges so that, as King said, "the deep fog of misunderstanding can be lifted from our fear-drenched communities."

The writer, a public affairs and government relations strategist, was executive director of the National Urban League Policy Institute from 2005 to 2010.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

The White Church and the Black Church have long been divided in the USA. Long ago in America the church became segregated when Southern Whites would not allow Blacks in their church during slavery and also in times of segregation. Blacks formed their own and to this day most White and Black families do not worship together. The seperation of people, in a church-setting is not what God intended clearly stated in all of God's scriptures. Unfortunately man-made religious interpretations of "Church in America" still designate the 11am hour (normal late service) each Sunday as "the most segregated hour in the United States," which is a quote Dr. King made on both "Meet the Press" -- in the early 1960's, and in the Letter from Birmingham Jail. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" sends a powerful message to the clergy of 'both' sects and the new Birmingham, Alabama adminstration.

Below is the full text of Dr. King's insightful words in the "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written forty-five years ago in April 1963.


Letter From Birmingham Jail
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
April 16, 1963

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. 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. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place In Brimingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through an these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. 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 refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants --- for example, to remove the stores humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes bad been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic with withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoralty election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run-oat we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run-off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. 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: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we 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, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. 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, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, 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. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet like speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. 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 your 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. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. 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" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." 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.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fan in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. 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. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a 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 inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts 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. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-
nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides-and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle---have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non segregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative. critics who can always find. something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who 'has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of Rio shall lengthen.


When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leader era; an too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious. irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Walleye gave a clarion call for defiance and .hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? l am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Par from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it vi lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, ham and all over the nation, because the goal of America k freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if .you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.
It is true that the police have exercised a .degree of discipline in handing the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in pubic. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face Jeering, and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My fleets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They viii be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake. 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 what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us. all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.


Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- 25th Anniversary of the King Holiday

from Wikipedia

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King is often presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.

A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.

Early life and education

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the middle child of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. King's father was born "Michael King", and Martin Luther King, Jr., was originally named "Michael King, Jr.," until the family traveled to Europe in 1934 and visited Germany. His father soon changed both of their names to Martin Luther in honor of the German Protestant leader Martin Luther. King, Jr. had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.

King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity's claims. Most striking, perhaps, was his denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly."[

Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They had four children; Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama when he was twenty-five years old in 1954. King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." A 1980s inquiry concluded portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly but that his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship."

Influences

Thurman

Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College, Thurman mentored the young King and his friends. Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and conferred with Mahatma Gandhi. When he was a student at Boston University, King often visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel. Walter Fluker, who has studied Thurman's writings, has stated, "I don't believe you'd get a Martin Luther King, Jr. without a Howard Thurman".

Gandhi and Rustin

With assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee and inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India in 1959. The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation." African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin had studied Gandhi's teachings. Rustin counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence, served as King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism, and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin.

Sermons and speeches


All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structu  of reality.

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a "passionate" statement of his crusade for justice. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in the United States.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955

In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with the Jim Crow laws. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; because Colvin was pregnant and unmarried, E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death.

On September 20, 1958, while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store on 125th Street, in Harlem, King was stabbed in the chest by Izola Curry, a deranged black woman with a letter opener, and narrowly escaped death.

Gandhi's nonviolent techniques were useful to King's campaign to change the civil rights laws implemented in Alabama. King applied non-violent philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrote The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived. His SCLC secretary and personal assistant in this period was Dora McDonald.

The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began telephone tapping King in the Fall of 1963. Concerned that allegations (of Communists in the SCLC), if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. J. Edgar Hoover feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.

King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

King and the SCLC put into practice many of the principles of the Christian Left and applied the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.

Albany movement

The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia in November, 1961. In December King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."

But the following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. "Those agreements", said King, "were dishonored and violated by the city," as soon as he left town. King returned in July 1962, and was sentenced to forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Chief Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."

After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote non-violence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts. However, it was credited as a key lesson in tactics for the national civil rights movement.

Birmingham campaign

The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the SCLC to promote civil rights for African Americans. Many of its tactics of "Project C" were developed by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, Executive Director of SCLC from 1960–1964. Based on actions in Birmingham, Alabama, its goal was to end the city's segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies. The campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police into filling the city's jails to overflowing, King and black citizens of Birmingham employed nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when he said, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation".

Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott to pressure businesses to offer sales jobs and other employment to people of all races, as well as to end segregated facilities in the stores. When business leaders resisted the boycott, King and the SCLC began what they termed Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke arrest. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, SCLC's strategist, James Bevel, initiated the action and recruited the children for what became known as the "Children's Crusade". During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs to control protesters, including children. Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation improved immensely, Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks.

St. Augustine and Selma

King and SCLC were also driving forces behind the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. The movement engaged in nightly marches in the city met by white segregationists who violently assaulted them. Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed.

King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months. A sweeping injunction issued by a local judge barred any gathering of 3 or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.
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History of the King Memorial

January 15, 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr. (originally named Michael King) is born in Atlanta, GA.

February 25, 1948 King is ordained and is appointed associate pastor to his father, the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

June 8, 1948 King graduates from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology.

May 6-8, 1951 King graduates Crozer Theological Seminary with a Bachelor of Divinity degree.

June 22, 1952 While attending graduate school at Boston University, King is initiated into the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

June 18, 1953 King marries Miss Coretta Scott.

May 17, 1954 The United States Supreme Court rules unanimously that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional in Brown vs. the Board of Education, stating that “separate can never be equal.”

October 31, 1954 King is installed as the twentieth pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL.

June 5, 1955 King receives his Ph.D. degree in Systematic Theology from Boston University.

December 5, 1955 Dr. King is elected President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group formed to coordinate the bus boycott.

December 20, 1955 Buses in Montgomery are integrated after federal injunctions are issued against many city and bus company officials. In the months before integration of buses occurs, the United States Supreme Court upholds an earlier ruling that declares mandatory bus segregation laws unconstitutional.

February 14, 1957 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference ("SCLC") is formed ; Dr. King is named its first president.

February –March 1959 Dr. and Mrs. King spend a month in India as guests of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, studying Mohandas K. Gandhi’s techniques of nonviolent resistance.

March – April, 1962 Dr. King is arrested during a demonstration in Birmingham. On April 16, he writes his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” in which he describes the motivation and defends the need for nonviolent, direct action.

October 1, 1962 James Meredith becomes the first black man to enter the University of Mississippi. He is enrolled by order of the Supreme Court and escorted onto campus by U.S. Marshals.

October 16, 1962

Dr. King meets with President John F. Kennedy at the White House, urging him to support civil rights.

May 3-5, 1963 At a protest in Birmingham, young demonstrators are attacked with dogs and assaulted with water from fire hoses by order of Eugene “Bull” Connor, Director of Public Safety. Media coverage of the event provokes a national outcry against the tactics employed by segregationist leaders.

June 11, 1963 Governor George C. Wallace attempts to stop integration of the University of Alabama by preventing black students and Justice Department officials from entering. Governor Wallace removes himself from blocking the entrance after President Kennedy federalizes the Alabama National Guard.

August 28, 1963 At the historic March on Washington, the first large integrated protest march, Dr. King delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC.

September 15, 1963 The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama is bombed, killing four young girls and injuring many worshippers. Dr. King delivers a eulogy for the girls.

Summer 1964 The Mississippi “Freedom Summer” Project, a voter registration drive, is organized and instituted by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), with the aid of the SCLC.

July 2, 1964 Dr. King attends the signing of the Public Accommodations Bill, a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

August 25, 1964 Dr. King speaks at the Democratic National Convention, where the Democratic Party refused to seat members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

December 10, 1964 Dr. King accepts the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway.

February 9, 1965 Dr. King meets with President Johnson and other leaders to discuss voting rights for African-Americans.

March 21-25, 1965 More than three thousand march from Selma to Montgomery under the protection of federal troops. Along the way, their numbers increased to twenty-five thousand. The march ends in Montgomery, where Dr. King gives an address from the steps of the state capitol.

Summer 1965 Riots break out in Watts, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.

August 6, 1965 President Johnson signs the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Spring 1966 To rally support for the election of black candidates, King makes a “People to People” tour of the South.

May 16, 1966 Dr. King makes an anti-war statement at a Vietnam War protest in Washington, DC.

June 8-24, 1966 Dr. King, many civil rights leaders and supporters continue James Meredith’s “March Against Fear” after Meredith is shot.

Summer 1967 Riots occur in 164 U.S. cities. The largest riots break out in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan calling attention to the struggles faced by African Americans in Northern cities.

December 1967-1968 The SCLC forms and organizes the Poor People’s Campaign, a movement intended to alleviate poverty for Americans of all races and ethnicities.

April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

April 7-9, 1968 April 7, 1968, declared a day of mourning, is marked by memorial events and religious services across the country. A silent march is held in Memphis, and on April 9, a funeral service at Ebenezer Baptist Church and a funeral procession take place in Atlanta.

November 2, 1983 The Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday bill, a measure proposed in every legislative session from 1968 by Rep. John Conyers is signed by President Ronald Reagan, declaring King’s birthday a national holiday. However, the first legal holiday nationwide does not occur until January 20, 1986.

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Celebrate the Life of Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but his first name was later changed to Martin.

His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. From 1960 until his death King acted as co-pastor alongside his father.

King attended public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen. He received a B.A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished institution located in Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded a B.D. degree in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955.

In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott.

In 1954, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Always a strong worker for civil rights, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

He was ready, then, early in December 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses. During the boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a leader.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Mahatma Gandhi.

In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the civil rights struggle.

Dr King planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "I Have a Dream". Dr. King conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson.

He was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; Dr. King was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American Blacks but also a world figure.

On October 14, 1964, at the age of thirty-five, King was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

In 1965, Dr King and the SCLC helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and the following year he took the movement north to Chicago.

In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include poverty and the Vietnam War.

In 1968 Dr King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.

Civil Rights Act Exhibition Highlights Legal and Legislative Challenges and Victories

NEWS from the LIBRARY of CONGRESS

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom” Exhibition Highlights Legal and Legislative Challenges and Victories

Exhibition Opens Sept. 10

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It banned discrimination in public accommodations, such as hotels, restaurants, theaters and retail stores. It outlawed segregation in public education. It banned discrimination in employment, and it ended unequal application of voter-registration requirements. The act was a landmark piece of legislation that opened the doors to further progress in the acquisition and protection of civil rights.

The Library of Congress exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” which opens on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014, will highlight the legal and legislative struggles and victories leading to its passage, shedding light on the individuals—both prominent leaders and private citizens—who participated in the decades-long campaign for equality.

Located in the Southwest Gallery on the second level of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C., the year-long exhibition will be free and open to the public Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It closes on Sept. 12, 2015.

The exhibition will feature more than 200 items, including correspondence and documents from civil rights leaders and organizations, photographs, newspapers, legal briefs, drawings and posters. The materials are drawn primarily from the NAACP Records in the Library’s Manuscript Division and its Prints and Photographs Division.

In addition, audio-visual stations throughout the gallery will feature 77 clips showing dramatic events such as protests, sit-ins, boycotts and other public actions against segregation and discrimination. Eyewitness testimony of activists and from participants who helped craft the law will be included. The audio-visual material will be drawn from the Library’s American Folklife Center’s Civil Rights History Project and from the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

The exhibition will include two videos co-produced with HISTORY®. An introductory film narrated by Julian Bond, a political and civil rights leader and professor at American University and the University of Virginia, will focus on the significance of the Civil Rights Act. The second film will explore the impact of the Civil Rights Act and will feature interviews with Taylor Branch, author and historian; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a leader in the Civil Rights Movement; and Risa Goluboff, professor of law at the University of Virginia.

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom” is made possible by a generous grant from Newman’s Own Foundation, with additional support from HISTORY® for both audio-visual and educational outreach.

“By funding this exhibition, we proudly continue Paul Newman’s commitment to the empowerment of individuals,” said Robert H. Forrester, president of Newman’s Own Foundation. “We hope that the strength of the human spirit as reflected in this exhibit will inform people’s understanding of the present and provide inspiration to help create a better world for tomorrow.”

There are six thematic sections in the exhibition: Prologue, Segregation Era, World War II and the Post-War Years, Civil Rights Era, Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Impact.

Exhibition Highlights

Prologue will provide a historical backdrop for the course of race relations in the United States, from the beginning of the Revolutionary War Era (1775-1783) to the first decade of the 20th century. This section covers participation of African Americans in the Revolutionary War, the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, steps taken to grant newly freed African Americans basic civil and political rights, as well as the actions taken after the end of Reconstruction to roll back those rights. Highlights include a dramatic work based on the testimonies of former slaves, written by Ossie Davis and performed by Davis and his wife, Ruby Dee; Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld segregation with the concept “separate but equal.”

Segregation Era explores the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) by a group of black and white activists in 1909. The section also examines the escalation of racial violence. Important artifacts include the 9-foot-by-6-foot lynching flag flown at the headquarters of NAACP in New York City whenever an African American was lynched; a recorded autobiography by W. E. B. Du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP, in which he relates the experience that turned him into an activist.

World War II and the Post-War Years delves into civil rights initiatives, minorities in the military and the founding of civil rights organizations from 1940 to 1949. The section will feature the Fair Employment Practices Committee, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt established during this period. Highlights on display include a letter written by Jackie Robinson to his college friend on breaking the color barrier in professional baseball; a recording of Robinson fielding reporters’ questions after his first season in the major leagues; the Bayard Rustin and George M. Houser report on the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride conducted to test enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Morgan v. Virginia banning segregation in interstate travel; a photograph of the Journey of Reconciliation participants; and President Harry Truman’s two 1948 executive orders banning discrimination in federal employment and in the armed forces.

The Civil Rights Era focuses on the events and achievements of civil rights leaders and citizen-activists from 1950 to 1963. Pivotal events include the March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Highlights include U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren’s reading copy of the Brown v. Board of Education opinion; Rosa Parks’ arrest record from the day she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger; a telegram from Paul Robeson to A. Philip Randolph regarding the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till; an interview with Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth on bombings and beatings he suffered; documentary footage and interviews from numerous sites of protest, including Nashville, Tenn., Albany, Ga., Greenwood, Miss., Birmingham, Ala., Cambridge, Md., Oklahoma City, Okla., Jackson, Miss. and Plaquemine, La.; and speeches by John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. written for the March on Washington. Also in this section, a wide variety of civil rights-inspired songs—gospel, folk, jazz, rock and pop—will be heard.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 examines the culmination of efforts from private citizens, organizations, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the House and Senate leadership and members of the U.S. Congress. After eight months of congressional debate, the bill passed in the U.S. Senate on June 19, 1964. The House voted to adopt the Senate-passed bill on July 2, and that same day President Johnson signed the bill into law. Highlights include film footage of Oval Office deliberations prior to Kennedy’s national television address on civil rights; a debate about Kennedy’s speech among black leaders, including Malcolm X; video interview with key congressional figures, including Robert W. Kastenmeier, William M. McCulloch, John Lindsay, Emanuel Celler and Howard W. Smith; a televised debate on the bill between Senators Hubert Humphrey and Strom Thurmond; Johnson’s draft remarks delivered when he signed the bill; and a number of letters between NAACP officials Clarence Mitchell and Roy Wilkins concerning the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Impact section explores how the passage of the act lent the power of the federal government to the ongoing struggle for a more just and inclusive American society. It also looks at the shortcomings of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from the perspective of many civil rights activists and how further grassroots mobilization, judicial precedent and legislative action were needed to further expand civil rights protection.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

The Greatest Pitcher You've Never Heard Of

story by The Post Game
written by John Klima

The greatest pitcher nobody has ever heard of is buried in section 7, lot 1, row 17, grave 97 of Burr Oak Cemetery, where for more than 30 years, barely a soul knew about the man resting in an unmarked corner grave, his story buried alongside Chicago trumpeters and outfielders.

Then he had a visitor.

The first time Peter Gorton walked onto the cemetery grass, he couldn’t escape forgotten feelings of indignity. He was drawn to this quiet parcel of land and the history beneath his feet, and for years, unearthing this man’s memory has motivated him. They have little in common, but when the white 41-year old workaday dad and weekend ballplayer discovered the black left-hander who pitched his way into folklore a century ago, he found his baseball calling. Here rests John Donaldson, and nobody remembered his name.

“THE GREATEST COLORED PITCHER IN THE WORLD"

There was a time when John Donaldson was as famous as Satchel Paige. He was heralded as the “famous colored twirler,” whose only crime was playing his best years before 1920, when the Negro Leagues were officially created. Not only did Donaldson miss his chance to pitch in front of large crowds, he missed the chance to cement himself into contemporary baseball history. The pitcher who won more than 350 games and had 4,500 strikeouts has largely been lost to time.

In the days before black baseball became the economic force that motivated white baseball to integrate in 1947, Donaldson was one of its original stars. Newspaper accounts compared his change-up to that of Christy Mathewson and his fastball to that of Rube Waddell -- both dominant pitchers of the 1900s. In the early years of black baseball, Donaldson was a trailblazer for the trailblazers. And because he played his best baseball in small towns instead of big cities, he faded like his change-up.

Donaldson became famous when he pitched on diamonds carved out of farmlands in the Midwest, in front of fans sitting on picnic blankets and on the hoods of Model-Ts. Donaldson pitched off shoddy mounds and perfected a high arm angle, so that his fastball roared down a fearsome slope. The local bush leaguers had never seen anything like him before. He left thousands of strikeouts behind him.

Almost 30 years after Donaldson was laid to rest, Gorton, a Minnesota native, began hearing stories in small-town Minnesota about a smoke-throwing left-hander from the Negro Leagues. Armed with a passion for baseball and a strong sense of history, Gorton visited a historical society in Bertha, Minn. where he got his first look at Donaldson, on a yellowing advertisement for the pitcher’s barnstorming troupe:

JOHN DONALDSON; GREATEST COLORED PITCHER IN THE WORLD.

What Gorton discovered next changed his life. When he asked the curator if he could take the poster off the wall for a closer look, he noticed a familiar face -- himself. Beneath Donaldson’s feet was a photo of the 1987-88 District 24 Champion Staples Fighting Cardinals High School basketball team. The gangly Gorton is fourth from the right, almost directly below the face of the greatest pitcher nobody has ever heard of. Donaldson hadn’t been under Gorton’s feet – Gorton had been under Donaldson’s nose.

“Right then and there, I was tied to it,” Gorton says. “I felt from that day there was something I was drawn to.”

"IF I ACT THE PART OF A GENTLEMAN, AM I NOT ENTITLED TO A LITTLE RESPECT?”

Gorton discovered fans had once loved Donaldson, who was born Feb. 29, 1892 in Glasgow, Missouri, a small town near the Mason-Dixon line. Donaldson sprouted into a physical powerhouse with a positive demeanor whose options did not match his optimism. He grew up striking out the town team and joked in later years that he had been born with a ball in his hand. By the time he was a teenager, he knew his lightning left arm might take him far away from home.

A young black ballplayer’s best bet back then was to catch on with a barnstorming team. Donaldson joined the Tennessee Rats in 1911 and ventured deep into the Midwest, pitching against town teams in the rural Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Rats played as many games as they could book, lived in the bus, ate out of paper bags, and considered themselves lucky.

Derogatory experiences were a way of life. Even the team name was meant to convey filth to white fans. Various newspapers called them “darkies.” The Rats survived off gate percentages and passed the hat when somebody hit a home run -- sometimes courtesy of Donaldson, who played centerfield when he wasn’t pitching.

Donaldson understood that discrimination was part of the deal, and years later, he recalled how fans paid admission for the right to say what they wanted, but he refused to be anything less than dignified. “When I go out there to play baseball,” Donaldson said, “It is not unusual to hear some fan cry out, ‘Hit the dirty n-----.’ That hurts. For I have no recourse. I am getting paid, I suppose, to take that. But why should fans become personal? If I act the part of a gentleman, am I not entitled to a little respect?”

Donaldson’s dignity moved Gorton, who traveled to Glasgow and interviewed anybody in the town of 1,263 who said they had a memory of the hurler. Gorton read every edition of the local newspaper from 1905 until 1930. He found no descendents, but did find a rich oral history.

“He got along with everyone,” Gorton says. “People who I talked to said they didn’t see him as a black person, they saw him as a great baseball player and they wanted him to play on their team. That was remarkable to me.”

So were Donaldson’s exploits. Gorton collected what he could and then began a one-man letter-writing campaign to public libraries and historical societies throughout the Midwest, providing strangers with leads if Donaldson had been to their town, and asking for their help. One headline at a time, Donaldson’s games arrived in Gorton’s mailbox, and the lefty came back to life.

“Donaldson, the left handed colored man, registered the phenomenal record of nineteen strikeouts.”

“Struck out, by Donaldson, 16.”

“One of the greatest pitchers in the bush today.”

“Donaldson, the southpaw, did the twirling act and he had the best of them guessing.”

“Donaldson was again on the mound and those who witnessed the game say he was as strong at the end of the twelfth inning as he was at the beginning of the game the day before.”

Soon, the forgotten pitcher had a volunteer army. Gorton’s network unearthed an 18-inning, 31-strikeout game, a 27-strikeout game and four 19-strikeout outings. But a bigger world awaited Gorton when his group began unearthing Donaldson’s career with the All-Nations team, which was the forerunner to what became Negro League baseball’s most prestigious club.

"I WOULD GIVE $50,000 FOR HIM AND THINK I WAS GETTING A BARGAIN.”

The All-Nations were an inter-racial barnstorming team formed in 1912 that sold tickets on the gimmick that black, white, Latino, and even female ballplayers could play together. Donaldson teamed with a Cuban right-hander, Jose Mendez, to form one of the period’s most dominating duos. Donaldson continued to rack up strikeouts, and nearly a century later, Gorton continued piecing his career together:

“Struck out, by Donaldson, 28”

“Donaldson is credited with twenty-five strikeouts.”

“Struck out - by Donaldson, 22”

Over the past decade, Gorton’s network has uncovered about 1,900 games in which Donaldson pitched, many for the All-Nations, where Donaldson won his greatest fame and left ghosts to chase.

“He went from being this small town guy to this historically significant guy,” Gorton says. “I’d start tracking the All-Nations and found hundreds upon hundreds of games from all over. He was an automatic 10-strikeout-a-game guy.”

Gorton soon received a tip that helped put Donaldson’s physical ability in proper perspective. He heard from a man in St. Paul whose grandfather had taken motion picture film footage of Donaldson pitching. Gorton raced to the scene. The man “plopped me on the couch, told me not to say a word, and to just watch,” he says.

Gorton was stunned when he saw the greatest pitcher nobody ever heard of flicker to life, firing a few fastballs in 1925. When Gorton showed the video to a couple of veteran scouts, one said that Donaldson reminded him of a left-handed Bob Gibson.

“It’s amazing that nitrate film survived for 80 years in some moldy basement,” Gorton says. “I love watching it.” Then he offers hopefully, “There might be more! He has reels and reels.”

Still other evidence eludes Gorton, including a game against the New York Giants sometime around 1915 when Giants manager John McGraw is believed to have offered the light-skinned pitcher a contract if he would agree to pass as Cuban instead of black at a time when there were a handful of Cuban major leaguers.

Gorton can’t find the game, but he did find Donaldson’s version of the story, published in 1932. “One prominent baseball man in fact offered me a nice sum if I would go to Cuba, change my name and let him take me into this country as a Cuban,” Donaldson said. “It would mean renouncing my family. One of the agreements was that I was never again to visit my mother or have anything to do with colored people. I refused. I am not ashamed of my color.”

Donaldson’s dignity moves Gorton as much as Donaldson’s stuff moved McGraw, who is quoted as saying, “If Donaldson were a white man or if the unwritten law of baseball didn’t bar Negroes from the major leagues, I would give $50,000 for him and think I was getting a bargain.”

Gorton admires Donaldson’s vibrant elegance as much as All-Nations owner J. L. Wilkinson did. When he decided he wanted to rename the All-Nations, Donaldson suggested a title that would befit the grace and class he strove to inspire.

“Donaldson suggested the name ‘Monarchs’ one day when we were feeling around for a name,” Wilkinson told the Kansas City Call in 1948. “Right away, the name sounded good and we adopted it.”

Thus were born the legendary Kansas City Monarchs.

Satchel Paige became the most famous Monarch, but Wilkinson always believed that Paige would have to wait for his turn if he was in the same rotation with his former ace. “John Donaldson was the most amazing pitcher I ever saw,” Wilkinson said.

"HOPEFULLY THIS WILL END WITH DONALDSON IN THE HALL OF FAME"

After years of research, Gorton’s path finally led him to section 7, lot 1, row 17, grave 97. It was the first time he visited Donaldson’s unmarked gravesite at Burr Oak Cemetery. Gorton arrived with the conviction that began driving him a decade ago.

“From a modern perspective I still can’t understand how it could have ended up the way it did,” Gorton says. “It’s not right. Thousands of newspaper articles say how famous this guy was. How could somebody who was as prominent and at the front of an incredible period of change in this country end up in that situation?”

Donaldson finally gained a small measure of respect in 2004. Researcher Dr. Jeremy Krock, who leads the Negro League Baseball Grave Marker Project, learned that Donaldson was buried at Burr Oak. Krock credits Gorton’s work for bringing Donaldson’s career to light. A donation was made to purchase a head stone. The greatest pitcher nobody has ever heard of finally had a name again.

“Pete Gorton has single-handedly kept the John Donaldson name alive,” Krock says. “Pete championed the case for [Donaldson’s inclusion on] the Hall of Fame ballot in 2006 and started the Donaldson network going with a large number of dedicated volunteers. Hopefully this will end with Donaldson in the Hall of Fame.”

Gorton doesn’t consider the work done. Donaldson wasn’t elected in 2006, but Gorton firmly believes Donaldson belongs enshrined with half-brothers Rube and Willie Foster, both Hall of Fame Negro League left-handed pitchers. He wants Donaldson to be included more often in discussions of the best pitchers in Negro League -- and baseball -- history.

“We may never finish digging,” he says.

Gorton’s network discovered that Donaldson was the first fulltime black scout in baseball history when the White Sox hired him in 1949. When the White Sox learned that Donaldson had been one of their own, they paid $2,000 for the headstone.

Donaldson signed Negro Leaguer veterans Sam Hairston, Bob Boyd and Connie Johnson for the White Sox, but he couldn’t get the front office to commit to signing Birmingham Black Barons outfielder Willie Mays in 1950. Donaldson also knew about Henry Aaron and Ernie Banks when they were rookie Negro Leaguers, but couldn’t get the White Sox to let him sign younger black players. Frustrated, he resigned, and worked for the Post Office until his death in Chicago in 1970.

While researching in Memphis, a member of Gorton’s network saw a handwritten letter Donaldson wrote about Mays. Donaldson never lost his dignity even when he lost the player who would have made him famous all over again.

In the letter, he thanked the Black Barons owner for the opportunity to scout Mays. The closing of the letter speaks to Donaldson’s pride, in words he could have spoken just as easily to the visitor at grave 97, Peter Gorton, the man who trumpeted his forgotten name:

I am respectfully your friend,

John W. Donaldson

Live Video of Donaldson here or click title: http://www.thepostgame.com/features/201103/greatest-pitcher-youve-never-heard

To learn more about pitcher John Donaldson or to contact the Donaldson Research Network, visit http://johndonaldson.bravehost.com/.