From A Birmingham Jail

Recently the old Empire Theater was completely remodeled after years of neglect and decay and re-opened as "The Mainstreet Theater". It was a grand old movie house in it's day, and it was the first job I ever worked...as an usher. I shouldn't have been able to get a job back then, but I lied about my age (15), and they hired me.
One night, right in the middle of a showing of "2001, A Space Odyssey", the management made a special announcement..... the theater needed to be cleared out and shut down immediately. There was rioting going on in the streets, all across the city. Folks were told to leave and go home. The police were out in full force. It was a very chaotic few days following that unusual night.
When you're a young, white teenager growing up in the late 1950's/early 60's you mind is on girls, cars, clothes and partying (at least mine was). It definitely wasn't dwelling on racial issues, particularly segregation and racial equality.
Recently we celebrated a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I decided, after all these years, to read something that Dr. King penned many years ago,... in 1963 to be exact. It is called, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which he addressed to fellow clergymen from his jail cell after being arrested on the trumped-up charge of "parading without a permit". Dr. King had been summoned to Birmingham to participate in a non-violent demonstration against segregation in that large southern city. Some of his contemporaries in the Churchwere upset with him for stirring up the local government by organizing some of the demonstrations, consisting mainly of sitting at lunch counters reserved for "whites only".
Dr. King, through his letter, defends his actions and makes sterling arguments for the use of non-violent resistance to bring about social justice. He claimed that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".
The black experience in America, especially in the South, had been brought to a boiling point and the non-violent demonstrations were simply to bring to the surface the brutality was was already present in the society. Televised scenes of water canons, billy clubs and attack dogs, methods used by the police on the peaceful protesters, changed the hearts and minds of a great number of Americans and became a tipping point in the fight for racial equality.
One paragraph in the letter which paticularly struck me was this one.....
"When you find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?";... when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable confines of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored",' when your first name becomes "nigger", your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your last name becomes "John", and your wife and mother are never given the respected title, "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you're a Negro...... there comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair".....

Startling, elegant words....

That night in 1968 was an extraordinary time in history and, at the time, I could not, did not, appreciate it for the history that it was. I was just an ignorant teenager, trying to enjoy a nice, spring evening in April, totally unaware of the implications of what was happening at a Memphis motel, hundreds of miles away, where a remarkable man, struggling to bring peace into a hostile environment, was the target of a sniper's bullet.... Now I know.
I would encourage anyone reading this blog today to take some time out to read "Letter from a Birmingham jail". I'm sorry that it took me so long to get around to reading this wonderful letter, ... a plea for peaceful change in a time of great human animosity and turmoil.

"Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty"... Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

To read the letter in it's entirety you can click on the link below...

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Have a great week!