Opinions | MLK wrote a love letter to a country torn apart by hatred. Does it sound familiar?
The huge cruel wave makes us pound. Government officials use the law to attack the weak and vulnerable. Out of fear or indifference, citizens turn a blind eye to pain and injustice.
These conditions are the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who he described in his letter to Birmingham, Alabama. The letter was first published in May 1963 and in the days before the electronic media, the feat of a nearly 7,000-word essay full of philosophy spread widely. It was reproduced by newspapers and magazines, and the church distributed the copy to believers.
The letter resonates because it is more important than anything else, it is a love letter, a love letter for a nation torn apart by hatred. Dr. King’s message stems from the belief that love has the power to overcome abuse and even reform unjust institutions and laws. His protests in Birmingham were intended not only to condemn the city’s apartheid laws, but also to call on Americans to take action.
Dr. King believes that if most government leaders and ordinary Americans see their despicableness, they will choose to be merciful. This is a belief inspired by his Christian faith. That’s why he went to jail and why he asked hundreds of others to follow him. Indeed, when Americans then saw peaceful protesters hit by water cannons, attacked by police dogs and filled with police cars, politicians responded.
Today, as the Trump administration expels people without due process, cuts money for education and science, fires federal workers to thousands of federal workers, destroys global alliances, and punishes perceived enemies, cruelty prevails. Meanwhile, President Trump’s approval rating is declining.
For those who disapprove of his tactics, who prefer mercy rather than marginalization, hoping to fight back but don’t know how, Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Prison” shows the way.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde directly asked Mr. Trump to show sympathy to immigrants and LGBTQ people in January, indicating Dr. King’s form of peaceful protest. Maryland Sen. Chris van Hollen met with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia of Maryland last month in El Salvador, who did the same thing when he was wrongly deported in Maryland. One might imagine that after the Senator and Dr. King’s example, a delegation of religious leaders in the United States marched in front of prisons, Mr. Abreg Garcia was detained and demanded that he release his people, when their numbers grew in one day and a week, as Americans recognized that a person’s arbitrary loss of rights threatened all of our rights.
For Dr. King, it is never easy to strike a balance between love and action. Some of his critics complained that he was too passive because he insisted on working in and around the system, meeting and negotiating with the mayor, police chief and president, who enforced his protest policies and never called for violence. Others accused him of seeking too early, saying he needed to give more time for change to government officials and white segregators.
But Dr. King almost always makes mistakes in confrontation, which is why not only did he wait for his release, he began to paint his letters on napkins, newspaper scraps and toilet paper at Birmingham prison.
“We do not have a single civil rights gain without legal and nonviolent pressures,” he wrote. “People in power seldom voluntarily give up their powers. “Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their injustice postures,” but “groups are often more immoral than individuals.”
Democracy is a convention that relies on the survival of individuals. The moment a group decides not to respect the treaty anymore, the system may collapse. Dr. King’s letter from Birmingham Prison is a tribute to democracy and a plea for the renewal of the contract that binds us. Black men and women are descendants of enslaved people, showing the country that they love American democracy and are enough to fight for it. Those facing arrests and attacks for protests at the southern lunch yards “stand the best of the American dream” and “bring our country back to the democratic wells dug deep by the Founding Fathers.”
Dr. King suffered from proving his faith in God and America. He was arrested 29 times before being assassinated in 1968.
What will Dr. King do today? In preaching, speeches and prose, he gives us the answer. He told us that although elected officials may try to divide us by irritation and anger, we shouldn’t let them go. He reminds us of our basic kindness and encourages us to trust and rely on the kindness of others. He told us not to expect immediate results. We often forget that in telling today’s story of Dr. King, his organized protests were thought to be from Albany, Georgia to Chicago. Even as his efforts in Birmingham were staggering for weeks, participation declined, media interest gradually faded until the city’s youth joined the protests and revived the movement.
Today, Dr. King will certainly call on elected leaders to change in unjust policies and he will get specific demands. He rejected advisors of progressive or temperance, but he did not see his opponent as inaccessible. He may call for economic boycotts to put pressure on business leaders as he did in Birmingham. He may rely on the respect of the clergy as often as he does to seize moral highs. This could mean requiring clergy to stand on the school gates to prevent relocation of undocumented children.
When we consider our actions, it is worth remembering that Dr. King chose to be arrested in Birmingham on April 12, 1963, intentionally violating the District Court order that prohibits march and protest. Yes, he is breaking the law, but he takes action to try to prove that the U.S. law itself has been violated and needs repairs.
For everyone who believes in Dr. King’s words, sitting on the court is not an option.
“I was in Birmingham because of injustice,” he wrote. “Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. We are trapped in an inevitable network of mutuality and tied to a clothing of fate.”
