Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History. In this video we're going to consider another one of your required foundational documents for the AP government curriculum, namely Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from a Birmingham jail. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, well then let's get to it. So there are about 9,000 things I could say about this document, but for our purposes, the AP government overlords just want you to understand this document as an illustration of how the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment supported and motivated social movement.
The social movement in question here was the Civil Rights Movement for the Equality of Black Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the key leaders of this movement was the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., whose way of fighting for civil rights was altogether different. He taught a means of agitation defined by nonviolent, direct action. That means the devotees of the Civil Rights Movement would have to endure suffering and imprisonment as they protested and sat at counters for white people only. And he did this precisely because many state governments were failing to uphold the rights of black Americans under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
So in 1963, King led a campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama's downtown shopping district, and he did so with a series of boycotts and sit-ins and marches. Long story short, the campaign got King and hundreds more arrested. In the midst of all that, a group of white clergy who were generally sympathetic to the cause of civil rights published an open letter in the newspaper saying that such disruptive practices were not effective and that black people in Birmingham needed to be patient and wait for the white folks to work through the courts and legislatures and then they will have their rights.
The letter from a Birmingham jail is King's response to their admonition, and he opens by explaining why he's in Birmingham since he himself lived in Atlanta. 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. He then goes on to justify the nonviolent direct action that he and his followers had engaged in.
It wasn't thrown together at the last minute, he says, but it had been meticulously planned and the participants had been trained and prepared for the likely possibility of violence and brutality. And the purpose of the movement in Birmingham was as follows. 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. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
In other words, In other words, meaningful negotiation will never occur unless a crisis raises the stakes. And why do the stakes need upping? We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.
And therefore, the admonition from the white clergy for King and his followers to be patient and wait could never be a reality for them. King says, For years now I have heard the word wait. It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This wait has almost always meant Never.
It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that justice too long delayed is justice denied. We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. So that's how King makes the case for the urgency of their actions at the present moment. Like, for him, the only way someone could rightly ask them to wait is because they themselves have never been on the receiving end of the humiliation and discrimination in racial segregation.
No, the time for them to act was at hand. And then he goes on to express his disappointment in the white clergy of Birmingham not for their racism, but for their moderation. And buckle your seatbelts, because this is astonishing. I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.
I've almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the white citizen's counselor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice."He says at least with the Ku Klux Klanner, black people understood their intentions. They were clear. But for the white moderates who urged caution and restraint on black people because their actions would too much disrupt society, King had no patience. 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. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God. And so, in light of that, King argues that their cause is a righteous one. Now, these white clergy also called King an extremist, and he gladly embraces that moniker. After all, he says, wasn't Jesus an extremist for love? And wasn't the Apostle Paul an extremist for the gospel? Wasn't Socrates an extremist for truth? And all of these men were martyred for their extremism. And if King stood in a line of extremists like that, he was just fine with it. And so, to end the letter, he brings the cause of civil rights for black Americans into the clouds and makes it shine until it's. brightness covers all. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries, our foreparents labored here without wages. They made cotton king, and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation, and yet out of a bottomless vitality, our people continue 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. Okay, that's what you need to know about MLK's letter from a Birmingham jail. You can click right here to grab my review packet for AP Government, which is going to help you get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May. And if this video helped, you can click right here and check out all my other videos on the other required documents. Heimler out.