Before He Had His
'Dream,' King Wrote a Letter
washingtonpost.com
By W. Ralph Eubanks
Sunday, January 16, 2005;
Page B03
It happened again the other
day. One of my children came home and, at dinner, brought up the topic
that comes up each year at this time. It shouldn't have surprised me.
For years now, Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been all about The Dream.
The dream, that is, as
expressed in King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Its words echo across the
country as the King holiday approaches. It is broadcast over school
loudspeakers. Famous sound bites -- about blacks and whites joining
hands, about black children judged not "by the color of their skin but
by the content of their character" -- are replayed on television, over
the iconic image of King in front of the Lincoln Memorial, waving to
the crowds that had marched on Washington with him on that late summer
day in 1963.
When my children were very little,
I loved to see them bubble with pride over what they had learned at
school about King's most famous speech. Its message of integration and
brotherly love resonated with their own lives as youngsters growing up
in an interracial household. But as they grew older, I also wanted them
to know something else -- something all young Americans should know. I
want our young people to know that before the dream, there was the
nightmare. I want them to learn about another piece of King's writing,
one that lays out the path to his dream. I want them to learn about the
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail."
King's "I Have a Dream" speech is
undoubtedly one of the great orations of the 20th century. I still
remember sitting in front of a black and white console TV on the floor
of our farmhouse in Mississippi, watching the report of the March on
Washington and King's speech on the evening news, with the August heat
hanging in the air. Unlike my children, I had only the vaguest inkling
of what "I have a dream" meant. Although my parents had sheltered me
from civil rights violence through our rural isolation, I must have
known that Mississippi was still more of a nightmare than a dream.
Yet I fear that many Americans --
and schoolchildren in particular -- are getting a sanitized view of the
civil rights movement with this solitary focus on the Dream speech.
Powerful as it is, the speech has become both iconic and
clichéd, presenting an uplifting image that's far from the whole
story. The bombings, dogs and fire hoses of Birmingham in 1963, when
the city's police commissioner, Bull Connor, chose to terrorize civil
rights protesters, are fading into memory, replaced by a single
triumphant moment, as if the way we live now came to be without pain or
sacrifice.
We must never forget King's dream;
but let us also not forget the nightmares he struggled with before and
after. And he captured those in the eloquent letter he wrote to eight
Alabama clergymen that April, a mere four months before his famous
speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
"I am in Birmingham because
injustice is here," King wrote. Birmingham was indeed a bastion of
injustice and segregation. Not only did it have the reputation of being
the most segregated city in the South, but it had the greatest number
of unsolved bombings of churches and civil rights workers' homes. The
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which was affiliated with
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had asked King to bring
nonviolent street protests to Birmingham to begin to crack its
segregationist core.
As the protests progressed, a group
of moderate white clergymen denounced them in an open letter to the
Birmingham News. Expressing a fear of violence, they demanded an end to
the demonstrations against segregated lunch counters, restrooms and
stores, calling them "unwise and untimely." These men were among the
most prominent religious leaders in the state of Alabama, representing
Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Roman Catholic churches, as well
as Reform Judaism.
After King was jailed on a charge
of parading without a permit, he wrote the "Letter from a Birmingham
Jail" to answer the clergymen. It was reprinted in the Christian
Century magazine; excerpts in the Saturday Evening Post and other media
outlets in August and September served as pre- and post-publicity for
the March on Washington. The letter brought attention to the Birmingham
movement and added to King's fame.
My first encounter with it came in
1976, in a philosophy class at the University of Mississippi, where I
analyzed King's logic and read some of the sources he quoted on
justice. It was my first exposure to King the thinker, rather than the
preacher and orator. And what began as an academic exercise has had a
lifelong impact on me.
If the "I Have a Dream" speech
showcases Martin Luther King Jr.'s oratorical skills, the "Letter From
a Birmingham Jail" exhibits the depth of his intellect. In its handling
of the themes of law and justice, it is a literary argument in the
tradition of Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." To make its
points, it evokes theologians and other thinkers from each of the
traditions of the eight clergymen to whom it is directly addressed.
King quotes a Catholic saint, Thomas Aquinas, on unjust law, the
20th-century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich on the sin of
"separation," and the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber to make the point
that segregation relegated black Americans to "the status of things."
Despite the clergymen's pleas for
moderation and patience, King knew that the struggles of black
Americans could not wait. "For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!'
" he wrote. "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.' "
Although the letter is peppered
with quotes from the likes of Saint Augustine, Socrates and T.S. Eliot,
there is something in it for every level of reader. In my household,
everyone from my second grader to my seventh grader has read parts of
it, and all of them can find a passage that speaks to them. King tells
us why the struggle for civil rights couldn't wait in words that all
schoolchildren can understand: He talks of children denied access to
amusement parks and of watching "ominous clouds of inferiority begin to
form in [their] little mental sky"; of children asking their fathers
why whites "treat colored people so mean"; and of adults suffering
inhumane treatment, "harried by day and haunted by night by the fact
that you are a Negro." "When you are fighting a degenerating sense of
'nobodiness' -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to
wait," he wrote.
The letter can inspire middle- and
high-school students to discuss racism and injustice in American
culture today. The statement "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere" recently led my 12-year-old and me into an animated
discussion of the injustices faced by some immigrants and the poor as
well as the inequities we confront each day right here in Washington.
Times have changed, but many of the
issues King tackled still play a role in our daily lives. Racism has
not been eradicated from American culture today. It lingers in the
shadows rather than showing its face in the light of day as it did on
the streets of Birmingham in 1963. It has also morphed into issues of
class and ethnicity as well as race. These are all issues young people
need to discuss openly today, because they will be facing them
throughout adulthood.
I'd like to see more schools
reading and discussing the "Letter From a Birmingham Jail." It is a
piece of writing that inspires me each time I pick it up, and each time
I read it I find something new in it.
So tomorrow, I plan to read the
letter with my three children. I'll be reading it to them and with
them, because in the words King wrote as he sat behind bars, waiting
for justice, you can see the seeds of his great speech, the beginning
of his dream, a vision of light. And I want my children -- all children
-- to walk in that light.
Author's e-mail:
wreubanks@starpower.net
W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of
"Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past" (Basic
Books).
© 2005 The Washington
Post Company