The “cover story” of the April 17 issue of the Christian Century reminded me of where and when I first read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
It was the summer of 1963–fifty years ago; I had just finished my sophomore year in college–and I had driven a girl I “had the hots” for to where her parents lived, in Hardinsburg, Kentucky.
[I say “a girl,” instead of “young woman,” remembering that, even though young men in the 18-22 demographic were at the time being drafted into military service, as the War in Viet Nam was heating up, Americans under 21 weren’t considered to yet be “adult” enough to vote.]
This girl’s dad was a Baptist minister in that small Kentucky county seat town; her parents and younger brother lived in a parsonage next door to the church house; an older sister was married and lived away. And one day, among the few I spent visiting with their family, I remember sitting in the pastor’s office at the church reading the latest issue of his subscription to the Christian Century.
Which says something significant about that girl’s father. I can’t imagine I would have known, at the time, much less have so valued a periodical I would spend the next half-century of my life faithfully reading. There is a difference, however–certainly where religion, ethics, politics and culture are concerned–between those who have and those who haven’t embraced the Century’s creative, discerning, prophetic, penetrating perspective.
As in, for example, that “Letter From Birmingham Jail”–which would come to be considered, alongside such seminal works as Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” a masterpiece in American letters–that it would have been first published in the summer of 1963 in the Christian Century.
The recent Century “cover story” interprets, with the hindsight of half-a-century’s scholarship, the context of King’s letter. The civil rights movement had heightened during the Spring of ’63, and on Good Friday, April 12, Dr. King had been arrested and jailed for leading a demonstration calling for the de-segregation of public accommodations in Birmingham.
Eight prominent Alabama clergymen (all males, of course, in those days) had published a letter criticizing King. And “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was his response, originally scribbled on scraps of paper smuggled into King’s jail cell.
In his April 17 Century article, “MLK’s Manifesto,” Robert Westbrook defines three different groups of white Southerners in relation to the civil rights movement. Most apparent were the two extremes: aggressive liberals in sympathy with a more militant approach; and, of course–at the other extreme–blatant bigots given to violence in opposition to racial integration. Not just among furtive Klansman, but also represented by such ignominious public figures as Birmingham police commissioner “Bull” Connor.
Between these extremes, however, was a more nuanced constituency of white moderates supportive of the civil rights movement and its goals, yet who were concerned that such social change needed to be implemented in more gradual, measured ways. Indeed, the eight Alabama clergy who had publicly criticized King would have represented such a point of view, and it was to their criticism that his letter was addressed.
Except that it was never sent to those clergymen. Rather, with its being first published in the Christian Century–and subsequently in other important national publications–King sought to elicit a larger national and international awareness and response to America’s civil rights crisis.
While the letter assumes a cordial posture toward those considered capable of being “reasoned with,” it represents an even more striking prophetic quality. Ever the biblical preacher, the cadence of King’s rhetoric evokes the spirit and tone of ancient Israel’s social-justice-seeking prophets found in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament.
Even though King explains that he and his entourage are not “outside agitators,” but have been invited to Birmingham by supportive local clergy, and offers an argument in the best tradition–both secular and religious–of ethical reasoning in support of civil disobedience, King is at his most confrontive when he asserts: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair . . . ‘Wait’ almost always means ‘Never.'”
Adding, “The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
As a 20-year-old college student, I was not unaware of nor un-sympathetic toward the civil rights movement in general and Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in particular. It was not, however, a major focus of my attention in those days. I was, instead, more interested in sports and sex.
Rather than participating first-hand in voter registration and civil rights demonstrations in the South, I spent my summers working as a youth director at a church to earn money for college expenses and playing baseball in a competitive league comprised of other collegiate athletes and some former professional ballplayers whose “game” was still pretty good.
Such that one day, during my visit to Hardinsburg, I showed up at a local playground to join some other guys in a game of pick-up basketball. Which was where I found myself playing against something of a prodigy, a tall, thin youth–not yet in high school–whose ability was remarkable. Only later would I realize that it was Butch Beard, a future All-American at the University of Louisville and a subsequent all-pro in the National Basketball Association.
As for my interest in sex–including the preacher’s daughter–she had grown up in a different larger city in Kentucky where her dad had been an assistant minister in a more prominent church. Her family had moved to Hardinsburg following her graduation from high school. As my college peer, her brains even exceeded her beauty. Not that I was, unfortunately, particularly interested in the former.
She told me, with a certain naivety (not, I confess, unlike my own), that in that larger church, where she had grown up, that her dad’s boss, the charming, charismatic senior minister–that he had nicknamed her, as a teenager, “Sweet Meat.”
Such a sexist, predatory comment hardly registered on me back then. I was as guilty of lusting after her myself. Which suggests what a lame idea it is that if we just keep kids in church enough, they won’t become sexualized. To the contrary, one’s emerging sexuality is likely the most salient characteristic of most normal adolescents and young adults–at church or otherwise.
The only rationalization I can claim concerning my prurient interest in that girl was that at least I wasn’t a much older, supposedly wiser and more mature distinguished senior minister of a prominent church entrusted with the moral and spiritual care and guidance of a congregation, including at least one, if not other attractive female teenagers.
Given half-a-century of reflection later, that she eventually broke off our compromised (at least on my part) “dating relationship” is surely a tribute to that particular preacher’s daughter. She was obviously more mature than I. And her unilateral decision to get me out of her life would become, for her, likely a blessing–indeed a decision I suspect she has been thankful she made ever since.
