Age 34, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail

After his birthday in mid-January 60 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was 34 years old for most of the year 1963. George Santos has been 34 since July of 2022.

As we know, Santos achieved one thing in this year at the age of 34: getting elected to the House of Representatives based on lies about every detail in his life.

Dr. King, who already had a list of real accomplishments by the time he reached age 34, added at least five more during that year of his life. He:

• worked on organizing and running the Birmingham Campaign that spring
  
• worked on organizing and running the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August, including his speech that conservatives are so fond of narrowly quoting
  
• was named Time's Man of the Year
• did behind-the-scenes work on the Civil Rights Act, which President Kennedy introduced in June 1963, though it wasn't signed until July 1964
  
• wrote the Letter from the Birmingham Jail and began forming that into the book Why We Can't Wait.
  

My original intent in writing today was to talk only about King's letter, but as I read about it I was reminded how close it was in time to the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act machinations, and I thought of him as a person at the age he was and what I was doing when I was 34. And then another currently notorious 34-year-old popped into my head.

This is a strange introduction to King's letter, which I've seen referenced and quoted so many times, but I admit I've never read in full until now. This was the year I was finally going to read it.

I knew King addressed it to white pastors (and rabbis) who had written to him, urging him to go more slowly, saying that they agreed with his goal but not his means. That it contains quotes like "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and "Justice too long delayed is justice denied." That he said he was almost more disappointed in white moderates than the Klan and the White Citizens' Councils.

There was more that I don't remember hearing before, though. One example:

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.

This same argument takes place today, of course. 

Another long section describes his heartfelt pain over realizing the Civil Rights movement would not be generally supported by the leadership of white Southern churches and synagogues based on the tenets of their shared religious principles:

Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; 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 a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

That passage about his disappointment in the churches as institutions (which is much more extensive than what I have quoted) feels the most personal, like hearing him think, and was also the newest to me.

As numerous commentators point out every year around this time, Dr. King wrote many words other than a few lines from one speech, and even those are taken completely out of the context of the full speech.

The fact that he was writing from a jail at age 34, while a person who probably should be in some type of jail is walking the halls of Congress, shows that some things — particularly the Republican Party — are going backwards even more now than they were then.