Nigel 
September 3rd,2009
Dr Martin Luther King Jnr in 1964 (photo from US Library of Congress)
Tim Ferriss has posted a great article on this topic here. Most of it is Dr King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham City Jail’. I’d not come across the letter before. Being me I was ungreen and printed it out so I could relax reading it in the conservatory (my notebook hasn’t been the same since it caught fire last year lol).
Before reading this I had only a vague idea of what Dr King achieved and how he set about it,so I did some research. You may find the following information helpful in placing King’s letter in context.
When he wrote the letter
Black people in southern states of the USA had been longing for freedom and equality for centuries.
1861:The American Civil War begins. It seems to have been triggered mainly by differing views on slavery and the resulting alarm.
1863:Abraham Lincoln declares all slaves in Confederate states to be free.
1865:The war is over. There are no more slaves.
1880:Black people are too frightened to stand for public office or vote. Southern states are bringing in laws to keep blacks and whites apart and maintain black people as an inferior part of society.
Rosa Parks the year she was arrested (Dr King in background)
1955 (literally a lifetime later): The situation is no better. In Montgomery (Alabama) Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger. Within two days almost no black people will ride on the Montgomery buses. The boycott lasts over a year and causes major financial problems for the city. King is one of 156 passive protestors arrested. He is ordered to pay a small fine or spend 386 days in jail. He proudly refuses to pay the fine but is released a couple of weeks later.
1956:The Supreme Court upholds a ruling that Montgomery’s policy of segregation on buses is illegal. One small battle is won. War goes on.
1961:The Albany Movement is formed. It coordinates and encourages thousands of black people in the city to get involved in non-violent protests about every aspect of segregation in the city of Albany (Georgia). Dr King is once more arrested and refuses to pay a fine. Three days later the Chief of Police orders he be kicked out of jail. Guess why.
1962:Non-violent protest has achieved nothing and people are becoming discouraged.
January –April 1963:Birmingham (Alabama) is one of the most segregated and racially divided cities in the USA. Attempts to bring attention to this situation are met with violent legal and illegal punishment. Project C is launched. It involves a carefully planned series of sit-ins and marches. They are to be non-violent,intended to provoke mass arrests until there is no longer any room in the city’s jails. It is expected this will force the city to negotiate. Students and children are involved. Police dogs and high pressure water hoses are used indiscriminately by the Police Department. Dr King is once more jailed and not allowed to consult with his attorney unless a guard is present. His supporters refuse to offer bail. They want to focus the country’s attention on what is happening. It is from this jail he writes his famous letter.
28 August 1963:A quarter of a million people hold a rally in Washington DC. They march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial –both places potent symbols of the American belief in freedom and equality. Dr King gives his “I have a dream”speech.
1965:Another protest march is organised. It starts at Selma (Alabama) and attempts to make its way to the State capital at Montgomery. They travel just six blocks before meeting state troopers and police who attack them with clubs,tear gas and bull whips. Seventeen protesters are hospitalised.
1968:Dr King is shot dead at a motel in Memphis. Riots follow in over a hundred cities around the United States. I am living in England and nineteen years old.
Deeper historical backgound
Until the mid nineteenth century most southern states of the USA based their economy on using black slaves from Africa. The soil and climate in the south were ideal for growing sugar and cotton. These crops were best grown on large plantations requiring a lot of unskilled labour. It was far cheaper to use slave labour for this work. Had the right crop been rice (which cannot be farmed efficiently using slaves) history would have run a very different course in the USA.
By 1860 the slave population had grown to four million:a threatening number. One person in every eight was a slave,and almost all of these were in the southern states.
Attitudes to slavery were very different in the South from the North,which is not surprising. The entire southern economy,the quality of life of the white landowners and the status of many whites was dependent on using slaves. A long-standing and comfortable life style was under threat. It’s amazing how clever we can be at making bad behaviour sound acceptable if there’s enough in it for us. In the South they established to their own satisfaction that black people were subhuman and could therefore be treated much as cattle.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected president,and for the first time the southern states no longer had a majority in Congress. Lincoln was bitterly opposed to slavery although at that stage he still believed in the right of each State to make up its own mind on the issue. He was however perceived as someone who would one day enforce change.
Feeling the very nature of their existence threatened,seven states pulled out of the Union before Lincoln even took office. Others followed. They called themselves The Confederate States of America. Within months this led to a civil war so bloody it makes the conflict in Afghanistan look like a playground tiff.
In 1862 Lincoln announced that slaves in any Confederate state that failed to return to the Union by the start of 1863 would be legally free. Of course he had to win the war to enforce this,but his proclamation made it far less likely France or England would join the war on the Confederate side. On 1 January 1863 he named the ten Confederate States and made their slaves free –which is a bit strange since slavery remained legal in all of the States he actually had control over. I guess that’s politics.
The war ended in 1865.
Over the next few years laws were brought in at national level to protect the rights of people who had been slaves but were now free. But people’s attitudes do not change overnight. Or even much over a generation. Technically blacks could vote and some blacks were elected to local government. Then rich whites developed a range of ways to frighten black people from voting,and by 1880 were firmly back in control. As the nineteenth century drew to a close southern states were successfully bringing in laws to keep blacks and whites apart. This kept blacks as an underclass and must have made it easier to continue despising them.
Disclaimer of sorts
I’ve tried hard to ensure the information above is accurate but I’m human. If you spot an error please let me know. Amendments will be credited.
