It’s Martin Luther King Day, and I need to continue a tradition I started two years ago, namely, a Martin Luther King Day blog.

• January 18, 2021: Excellence in Work. from Dr. King’s “street sweeper” speech
• January 17, 2022: Brotherly Love

This morning I’ve seen three editorials referring to “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.”

• A Timeless Work that Changed History by Eric Patterson, published by World Magazine
• Dr. Martin Luther King and the Nature of Law by John Stonestreet of Breakpoint, quoting Charles Colson
• Self-purification by Mike Metzger of Clapham Institute

Interestingly, each of these essays refers to a different aspect of the Letter. When I read it, here’s what grabbed me:

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly 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 the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking in agonizing pathos: “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 corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” men and “colored” when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title of “Mrs.” when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. 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. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. – Martin Luther King, April 1963

I guess the good news is that some of the conditions Dr. King describes have changed since 1963. The bad news is that what he experienced was happening at all, often at the hands of people who were in church on Sunday. The other part of the bad news is that racism is still ongoing, as I’ve written before.

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. (James 2.1, ESV)

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” (Revelation 5.9 – 10, ESV, emphasis mine)