Letter from a Birmingham Jail Continued.

This post from June has held up pretty well. 

As a side note, I just finished Grant by Ron Chernow and started His Truth is Marching On (John Lewis bio by Jon Meacham). You can easily connect the dots from the start of the Klan killing former slaves following the Civil War to the white mobs beating John Lewis at the lunch counter sit-ins to the Trump mob assaulting the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago.  

Original post below:

This one post became 2 as I was writing it. 

Evening thoughts. June 30, 2020

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Seth Godin and the 2020 legislative session.

Black Lives Matter.

During my Sunday run I found an audio performance of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast. After listening to it I decided to pull a few excerpts into my latest blog. I won’t attempt to annotate Dr. King’s words other than to say that, like passages from James Baldwin and Langston Hughes I’ve shared recently, some of these words could have been written last week. Reading more Black authors is one of the best things I’ve done this year. Below are my selected excerpts. The hardest thing was trimming the list down. The full performance is here: https://soundcloud.com/.../dr-martin-luther-kings-letter...

Quotes from the letter. 

·       I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

·       Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality.

·       You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.

·       Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

·       History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

·       There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.

·       I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not 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;

·       We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people

·       In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?...Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion

·       Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice? -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

·       So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

And a long passage on the church…

·       I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership…all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

·       In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely 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 so many ministers say, "Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,"

·       The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

Performed by: Winnie Kao, Mike "Ambassador" Bruny, Doc Waller, Darius Gant, Garfield Hylton, Jermaine Maree, Shaun King, Pamela Slim, DeRay McKesson, Dr. Ivor Horn, Charlie Gilkey, Neal Ludevig, Charles Davis, Soledad O'Brien, Greg Hartle, Kimberly Nadia Scott, Lisa Nicole Bell, Paul Drayton, Codie Elaine, André Blackman, John Montgomery II, Daniel Jarvis, James Lopez, Donna Queza, Marc Aarons, Stella Santana, Alex Chavez, Spencer Pitman, Ankit Shah, Cliff Worley, Keylor Leigh, Stephanie Hasham, Willie Jackson, Don Pottinger, Rachel Rodgers, Dr. Angelica Perez-Litwin, Akilah Hughes, Diana Alvear, Danielle Jenene Powell, Emmanuel Azih.

Read the entire letter here. http://web.cn.edu/.../documents/letter_birmingham_jail.pdf