King: A Life

The words of the Declaration of Independence had a profound impact on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While imprisoned for civil disobedience in Birmingham, Alabama, King referenced, in a letter to white clergymen, the Declaration and the ideals of the Founders. He argued that the protesters “who sat down at lunch counters were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream,” and that their actions sought to “bring our nation back to the great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” 

In the excerpt below from King: A Life, journalist Jonathan Eig explores the events surrounding King’s imprisonment and the drafting of Letter from a Birmingham Jail, one of his most influential writings on the moral imperative to resist injustice. The hard metal bench on which King sat while imprisoned is on display in the Museum’s special exhibition, The Declaration’s Journey, presented by Griffin Catalyst. The exhibition also features an advanced press copy of his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. In this speech, King again  referenced the Declaration of Independence, saying, “I say to you today, my friends, though even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”  

Excerpt

On the day of King’s arrest, a group of eight clergymen in Birmingham had issued a statement calling on Black citizens to “withdraw support for these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working with peacefully for a better Birmingham.” The statement continued: “We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are ae convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.” Earlier in the year, most of the same white clergymen had written a statement encouraging white people in Birmingham to obey integration orders, declaring “no person’s freedom is safe unless ever persons freedom is equally protected.” ... 

But King, who read the statement under the weak glare of his jail cell's lightbulb, became disturbed. Why did everyone keep telling Black people to wait? The Kennedys said wait. Birmingham's mayor said wait. The reverend Billy Graham said wait. The Black professional class in Birmingham said wait. Editorial writers for The New York Times said wait. Give the government time to act, they all said; keep the peace and trust the process. But for, King and the people he felt called to lead, waiting signaled acceptance of an unjust plight. Waiting represented complicity. As King's mind spun, he set to work. He wrote on the margins of the newspaper, and, when he ran out of room in the newspaper margins, he scribbled on napkins and toilet paper. Sometimes he used the paper in which his sandwiches had been wrapped. 

On Sunday, April 14, A. D. King led another protest. Once again, it ended in violence, as police blocked the marchers and spectators hurled rocks at police. The next day, the lawyer Clarence Jones visited King and brought the good news that Harry Belafonte had raised $50,000 in bail money for jailed protesters. At the same time, Robert Kennedy coordinated with leaders of the United Auto Workers to send an additional $160,000. King told Jones about his response to the clergymen and handed him the scraps of paper on which he'd been writing. Jones sneaked them out of jail and gave them to Wyatt Tee Walker, who gave them to his secretary, Willie Pearl Mackey King, who typed King's words on her IBM Selectric. 

"The writing on the greasy sandwich wrappers was hard to make out," she recalled. The scraps were not always in order. "It was like a jigsaw puzzle. It was the worst thing I ever had to work on in my life." 

Walker helped piece the letter together. Once she was sure she had correctly deciphered King's scribbles, Willie Pearl Mackey King tossed the scribbled originals in the garbage. 

Martin Luther King Jr. soon received proper sheets of paper, and the typist's job got easier. But it went on for days. Typed pages went into the jail and came back with the prisoner's revisions, to be typed again. The letter stretched, eventually, to twenty double-spaced pages. As the first person to read it, and as someone who knew King, Willie Pearl Mackey King said she could sense the author’s emotion. “He wasn’t angry,” she said. “He was hurt. He was deeply hurt that men of the cloth could not understand what he was dealing with.” 

Wrote King: 

"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 time for little besides such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms."

The cordial introduction gave way to a searing attack. Few things agreed King more than racism in the church. His letter, written at a decisive moment in his leadership, written without access to his bookshelf and without the help of his frequent collaborators, would become his most passionate and lasting pose. He called upon the masterpieces of philosophy and theology he had learned at Crozer and Boston University. He called upon the works of Harry Emerson Fosdick, Harris Wofford, and his Morehouse mentor Gregory Kelsey that had been quilted into his sermons and essays for years and that he had loosely memorized. He called upon the Apostle Paul, who had written his own letters from jail, and the Hebrew prophets such as Jerimiah and Amos. Perhaps most of all he called upon predecessors in the Black church, including his grandfather, his father, and Vernon Johns, who combined protest and prophecy. Going to jail inspired King to preach and to protest, to write with a fervor that seldom appeared in his prose, and in the process, to redefine American religious leadership.  

[...] 

On April 20, after more than a week in jail, King and Abernathy were freed, their beards unkempt, their grassroots movement still in danger of collapse. 

King, in his first press conference, continued to complain of disunity in the Black community. A week later, when the movement led a rally for the twenty-fifth consecutive night, it was clear that audiences were diminishing in size. The city's strategy-filling the jails, sapping the movement with injunctions, and avoiding big headlines-seemed to drain the energy from King's followers. 

"You know, we've got to get something going," he said privately. "The press is leaving." 

Many adults in the Black community, and even some of the preachers, were eager to see the movement come to an end and see King depart, said Dorothy Cotton. "If you hear them talk now," she recalled, "they all loved Martin Luther King. But they didn't all love Martin Luther King, and.... they wished that he would get out of town with his mess." 

James Bevel of the SCLC and Isaac Reynolds of CORE, who had been training young protesters, urged King to enlist high school students to restore the flagging size and vitality of the demonstrations. Bevel always seemed to be pushing King, and King appreciated the younger man's passion, courage, and intelligence, leaving it to Andrew Young to rein Bevel in when he became too aggressive. King wanted Bevel's ideas and his energy Bevel was sometimes referred to as "the Prophet." "He'd never stop talking, even to racists, Young said of Bevel. "He'd go into a grocery store and buy a Coke and Moon Pie and start a conversation," knowing that half the time the grocer was going to call the police as soon as he left the store. He wore a Jewish skullcap on his shaved head to honor Old Testament prophets and because he considered himself part Jewish. Bevel argued that while the adult Black community in Birmingham remained hopelessly fragmented, the children could be united in action. He and others—including James Orange, a recently graduated high school football star from Birmingham—visited high schools and found the students eager to participate. 

Hundreds of them skipped school to gather on Thursday afternoon, May 2, at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. At the same time, however, in his suite at the Gaston Motel, King met with members of the Black middle class who were outraged that their children might be used as pawns in a violent game of chess with Bull Connor. 

At noon, groups of students marched from the church toward downtown. High school students composed the majority, but much younger children marched, too. Some of them looked like they were no more than ten years old, gap-toothed and spindly-armed. They sang freedom songs, laughed, and clapped. Some groups marched toward city hall, others toward the downtown shopping district. 

"Sing, children, sing!" called a spectator as one group of students joined in "We Shall Overcome."