In honor of MLK day...

[loligo]

... why not take some time to read (or re-read) King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". It's full of quotes that I've seen many places, but I'm not sure I've ever read the whole thing in one piece before.I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been

Comments

[veejane]

He was an excellent rhetorician. (That essay is in the back of just about every writing textbook, and not because of its author's sainted position in American politics.) I don't re-read it very often, but it's really striking that he wrote it cold, without any reference books. Each of those paraphrases and quotations is from his memory.

The thing that amazes me about it is that it works on me and it moves me, even though I disagree with some of its premises. That takes some real doing.

[loligo]

Come to think of it, I probably did read the whole thing in high school, but 20 more years of life experience give the words a whole new resonance, to put it mildly.

[litch]

my mother was born in 1930 in tennessee, she was a decided white moderate who told me that while she agreed with Dr. King she thought he pushed for too much too fast.

She believed that while she could come to accept racial equality the older generations wouldn't and the harder they were pushed, the harder they would push back.

[serrana]

*laughs ruefully and high-fives you*

Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose, eh?

[minnow1212]

That was the quote that was running through my head today as I drove home from work. I'm glad you posted it :)

[morgan_dhu]

I hope you don't mind - I came here to respond to your comment to my comment in mac_stone's post, since that post is now friends-locked.

Thank you for getting what I was trying to say in that comment.

And thank you for posting this from Dr. King. I had not read it before, and I'm saddened by the fact that it seems that so little has changed.