The autobiography of martin luther

and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord

shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go hack to the South

with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of

despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of

our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith

we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together,

to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we

will be free one day.

This will he the day, this will be the day when all of God's children

will be able to sing with new meaning: "My country 'tis of thee, sweet

land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the

Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if

America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hamp-

shire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from

every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let

it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every

city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children,

black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catho-

lics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro

spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at

last."

If anyone had questioned how deeply the summer's activities had

dent in the treatment accorded the March on Washington by all the

media of communication. Normally Negro activities are the object

of attention in the press only when they are likely to lead to some

dramatic outbreak, or possess some bizarre quality. The march was

the first organized Negro operation that was accorded respect and

coverage commensurate with its importance. The millions who

viewed it on television were seeing an event historic not only because

of the subject but because it was being brought into their homes.

Millions of white Americans, for the first time, had a clear, long

look at Negroes engaged in a serious occupation. For the first time

millions listened to the informed and thoughtful words of Negro

spokesmen, from all walks of life. The stereotype of the Negro suf-

fered a heavy blow. This was evident in some of the comments,

which reflected surprise at the dignity, the organization, and even

the wearing apparel and friendly spirit of the participants. If the

press had expected something akin to a minstrel show, or a brawl,

or a comic display of odd clothes and bad manners, they were disap-

pointed. A great deal has been said about a dialogue between Negro

and white. Genuinely to achieve it requires that all the media of

communications open their channels wide as they did on that radi-

ant August day.

As television beamed the image of this extraordinary gathering

across the border oceans, everyone who beHeved in man's capacity

to better himself had a moment of inspiration and confidence in the

future of the human race. And every dedicated American could be

proud that a dynamic experience of democracy in the nation's capi-

tal had been made visible to the world.

21

DEATH OE ILLUSIONS

actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating

inaction of those who are good.

SEPTEMBER 15. 1963

Dynamite blast kills four young black girls in Sunday school at

Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

SEPTEMBER 18

Delivers eulogy for three of the four children

SEPTEMBER 19

King and other civil rights leaders meet with President John F.

Kennedy

NOVEMBER 22

president

It would have been pleasant to relate that Birmingham settled

down after the storm, and moved constructively to justify the

hopes of the many who wished it well. It would have been pleasant,

but it would not be true. After partial and grudging compliance with

some of the settlement terms, the twentieth-century night riders had

yet another bloodthirsty turn on the stage. On one horror-filled Sep-

tember morning they blasted the lives from four innocent girls, at

Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church: Addie Mae Collins,

Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. Police killed

another child in the streets, and hate-filled white youths climaxed

the day with the wanton murder of a Negro boy harmlessly riding

his bicycle.

I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible

September morning. I think of how a woman cried out crunching

through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I

think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a

stained glass window. I can remember thinking, was it all worth it?

Was there any hope?

In Birmingham, which we had believed to be a city redeemed, a

crucifixion had taken place. The children were the victims of a bru-

tality which echoed around the world. Where was God in the midst

of falling bombs?

In every battle for freedom there are martyrs whose lives are

forfeited and whose sacrifice endorses the promise of liberty. The

girls died as a result of the Holy Crusade of black men to be free.

They were not civil rights leaders, as was Medgar Evers. They were

not crusaders of justice, as was William Moore—a Baltimore post-

man who was gunned down as he sought to deliver the message of

democracy to the citadel of injustice. They were youngsters—a tiny

bit removed from baby food—and babies, we are told, are the latest

news from heaven.

So, children are a glorious promise, and no one could tell what

those children could have become—another Mary Bethune or Ma-

halia Jackson. But, they became the most glorious that they could

have become. They became symbols of our crusade. They gave their

lives to insure our liberty. They did not do this deliberately. They

did it because something strange, something incomprehensible to

man is reenacted in God's will, and they are home today with God.

"So they did not die in vain"

Perhaps the poverty of conscience of the white majority in Bir-

mingham was most clearly illustrated at the funeral of the child mar-

tyrs. No white official attended. No white faces could be seen save

for a pathetically few courageous ministers. More than children were

buried that day; honor and decency were also interred.

Our tradition, our faith, our loyalty were taxed that day as we

gazed upon the caskets which held the bodies of those children.

Some of us could not understand why God permitted death and

destruction to come to those who had done no man harm.

This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our

last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered

the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years that

they were privileged to act on this mortal stage, they played their parts

exceedingly well. Now the curtain falls; they move through the exit; the

drama of their earthly life comes to a close. They are now committed

back to that eternity from which they came.

These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the

victims of one of the most vicious, heinous crimes ever perpetrated

against humanity.

Yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy cru-

sade for freedom and human dignity. So they have something to say to

us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the

gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass

windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed

his constitutents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of rac-

ism. They have something to say to a federal government that has com-

promised with the undemocratic practices of Southern Dixiecrats and

the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing Northern Republicans. They have

something to say to every Negro who passively accepts the evil system of

segregation and stands on the sidelines in the midst of a mighty struggle

for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must

substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be con-

cerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the

way of life, and the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their

death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly to

make the American dream a reality.

So they did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good

out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited

suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well

serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city.

The holy Scripture says, "A little child shall lead them." The death of

these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road

of man's inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brother-

hood. These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristoc-

racy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilt blood of these

innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to trans-

form the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of

a bright future. Indeed, this tragic event may cause the white South to

come to terms with its conscience.

So in spite of the darkness of this hour we must not despair. We

must not become bitter; nor must we harbor the desire to retaliate with

violence. We must not lose faith in our white brothers. Somehow we

must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect

the dignity and worth of all human personality.

May I now say a word to you, the members of the bereaved families.

It is almost impossible to say anything that can console you at this

difficult hour and remove the deep clouds of disappointment which are

floating in your mental skies. But I hope you can find a little conso-

lation from the universality of this experience. Death comes to every

individual. There is an amazing democracy about death. It is not an

aristocracy for some of the people, but a democracy for all of the people.

Kings die and beggars die; rich men die and poor men die; old people

die and young people die; death comes to the innocent and it comes to

the guilty. Death is the irreducible common denominator of all men.

I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirma-

tion that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great

sentence of life, hut a comma that punctuates it to more lofty signifi-

cance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state

of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let

this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power

during these trying days.

"Accomplices to murder"

As did most citizens of the United States, I looked to the White

House for solace in this moment of crisis. The White House could

never restore the lives of these four unoffending children. But, in my

mind and in my heart and in my soul, there was a dream and a hope

that out of this unbelievable horror would come lasting good. When

the President summoned me and leaders of the Birmingham move-

ment to confer with him, this dream became more poignant and

this hope more real.

We come to you today because we feel that the Birmingham situa-

tion is so serious that it threatens not only the life and stability of

Birmingham and Alabama but our whole nation. The destiny of our

nation is involved. We feel that Birmingham has reached a state of civil

disorder. There are many things that would justify our coming to this

conclusion.

The real problem that we face is this: the Negro community is about

to reach a breaking point and a great deal of frustration is there and

confusion. And there is a feeling of being alone and not being protected.

If you walk the streets, you are not safe; if you stay at home, you are

not safe; if you are in church, you are not safe. So that the Negro feels

that everywhere he goes that if he remains stationary, he is in danger

of some physical problem.

Now this presents a real problem for those of us who find ourselves

in leadership positions, because we are preaching the philosophy and

method of nonviolence. We have been consistent in standing up for

nonviolence. But more and more we are faced with the problem of our

people saying, "What's the use?" And we find it a little more difficult

to get over nonviolence. And I am convinced that if something isn't

done to give the Negro a new sense of hope and a sense of protection,

there is a danger we will face the worse race riot we have ever seen in

this country.

When I left the White House, I left with an almost audacious

faith that, finally, something positive, something definitive, some-

thing real would be done by the leadership of this nation to redeem

the community in which horror had come to make its home. I exer-

cised what I believed to be a tremendous restraint. In doing so, I

acted contrary to the wishes of those who had marched with me in

the dangerous campaigns for freedom. I was certain that my silence

and restraint were misunderstood by many who were loyal enough

not to express their doubts. I did this because I was naive enough to

believe that the proof of good faith would emerge.

It became obvious that this was a mistake. It began to become

obvious when I realized that the mayor who had wept on television

had not even had the common decency to come or to send an emis-

sary to the funerals of these murdered innocents. I looked back and

noted that the administration itself endorsed the pattern of segrega-

tion by having separate—and I v^^onder if they were equal—meetings

with the white and colored leadership. The presidential envoys

seemed to beheve that, by meeting with white people at one hour

and Negroes at another, they could bring about a redemptive under-

standing. This, we knew, they could not do. This, surely, the Presi-

dent must have understood, was impossible.

CHRISTMAS LETTER TO THE FAMILY OF DENISE MCNAIR

Dear Mr. and Mrs. McNair:

Here in the midst of the Christmas season my thoughts have turned

to you. This has been a difficult year for you. The coming Christmas,

when the family bonds are normally more closely knit, makes the loss

you have sustained even more painful. Yet, with the sad memories there

are the memories of the good days when Denise was with you and your

family.

for the great sacrifices made this year in the Freedom Struggle. I know

there is nothing that can compensate for the vacant place in your family

circle, but we did want to share a part of our sacrifice this year with you.

Perhaps there is some small thing dear to your heart in which this gift

can play a part.

We knew, when we went into Birmingham, that this was the test,

the acid test of whether the Negro Revolution would succeed. If the

forces of reaction which were seeking to nullify and cancel out all of

the gains made in Birmingham were allowed to triumph, the day

was lost in this battle for freedom. We were faced with an extreme

situation, and our remedies had to be extreme.

I fear that, from the White House down to the crocodile-weeping

city administration of Birmingham, the intent and the intensity of the

Negro has been misunderstood. So, I must serve notice on this nation,

I must serve notice on the White House. I must serve notice on the city

administration of Birmingham. I must serve notice on the conscience of

the American people. On August 28, we had marched on our capital.

It was a peaceful march; it was a quiet march; it was a tranquil march.

And I am afraid that some people, from the White House down, misun-

derstood the peace and the quiet and the tranquility of that march.

They must have beUeved that it meant that the Revolution was all over,

that its fires were quenched, that its marvelous militancy had died.

They could have made no greater error. Our passion to he free; our

determination to walk with dignity and justice have never abated. We

are more determined than ever before that nonviolence is the way. Let

them bring on their bombs. Let them sabotage us with the evil of coop-

eration with segregation. We intend to be free.

"Assassinated by a morally inclement climate"

Negroes tragically know political assassination well. In the life of

Negro civil rights leaders, the whine of the bullet from ambush,

the roar of the bomb have all too often broken the night's silence.

They have replaced lynching as a political weapon. More than a dec-

ade ago, sudden death came to Mr. and Mrs. Harry T. Moore,

NAACP leaders in Florida. The Reverend George Lee of Belzoni,

Mississippi, was shot to death on the steps of a rural courthouse.

The bombings multiplied. Nineteen sixty-three was a year of assassi-

nations. Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi; WiUiam Moore in

Alabama; six Negro children in Birmingham—and who could doubt

that these too were political assassinations?

The unforgivable default of our society has been its failure to

apprehend the assassins. It is a harsh judgment, but undeniably true,

that the cause of the indifference was the identity of the victims.

Nearly all were Negroes. And so the plague spread until it claimed

the most eminent American, a warmly loved and respected Presi-

dent. The words of Jesus, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of

the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" were more

than a figurative expression; they were a literal prophecy.

Men everywhere were stunned into sober confusion at the news

of the assassination of President Jack Kennedy. We watched the

thirty-fifth President of our nation go down like a great cedar. The

personal loss was deep and crushing; the loss to the world was over-

powering. It is still difficult to believe that one so saturated with vim,

vitality, and vigor is no longer in our midst.

President Kennedy was a strongly contrasted personality. There

were in fact two John Kennedys. One presided in the first two years

under pressure of the uncertainty caused by his razor-thin margin

of victory. He vacillated, trying to sense the direction his leadership

could travel while retaining and building support for his administra-

tion. However, in 1963, a new Kennedy had emerged. He had found

that public opinion was not in a rigid mold. American political

thought was not committed to conservatism, nor radicalism, nor

moderation. It was above all fluid. As such it contained trends rather

than hard lines, and affirmative leadership could guide it into con-

structive channels.

President Kennedy was not given to sentimental expressions of

feeling. He had, however, a deep grasp of the dynamics of and the

necessity for social change. His work for international amity was a

bold effort on a world scale. His last speech on race relations was the

most earnest, human, and profound appeal for understanding and

justice that any President has uttered since the first days of the re-

pubHc. Uniting his flair for leadership with a program of social prog-

ress, he was at his death undergoing a transformation from a

hesitant leader with unsure goals to a strong figure with deeply ap-

pealing objectives.

The epitaph of John Kennedy reveals that he was a leader un-

afraid of change. He came to the presidency in one of the most

turbulent and cataclysmic periods of human history, a time when

the problems of the world were gigantic in intent and chaotic in

detail. On the international scene there was the ominous threat of

mankind being plunged into the abyss of nuclear annihilation. On

the domestic scene the nation was reaping the harvest of its terrible

injustice toward the Negro. John Kennedy met these problems with

a depth of concern, a breath of intelligence, and a keen sense of

history. He had the courage to be a friend of civil rights and a stal-

wart advocate of peace. The unmistakable cause of the sincere grief

expressed by so many millions was more than simple emotion. It

revealed that President Kennedy had become a symbol of people's

yearnings for justice, economic well-being, and peace.

Owr nation should do a great deal of soul-searching as a result of

President Kennedys assassination. The shot that came from the fifth-

story building cannot be easily dismissed as the isolated act of a

madman. Honesty impels us to look beyond the demented mind that

executed this dastardly act While the question "Who killed President

I

Kennedy?" is important, the question "What killed him?" is more im-

Our late President was assassinated by a morally inclement climate.

It is a climate filled with heavy torrents of false accusation, jostling

winds of hatred, and raging storms of violence.

It is a climate where men cannot disagree without being disagree-

able, and where they express dissent through violence and murder. It is

the same climate that murdered Medgar Evers in Mississippi and six

innocent Negro children in Birmingham, Alabama.

So in a sense we are all participants in that horrible act that tar-

nished the image of our nation. By our silence, by our willingness to

compromise principle, by our constant attempt to cure the cancer of