March 22, 2006 at 17:35:15

Martin Luther King Is For Everybody, Not Just Black People; His Powerful Ideas Can Guide Us All Today.

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By Rev. Bill McGinnis (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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8. SOMETIMES WAITING MAKES THINGS WORSE - "It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively." "We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation."

9. MODERATION AND LUKEWARM ACCEPTANCE - "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

10. EXTREMISM FOR LOVE - "Was not Jesus an extremist in love? 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.' Was not Amos an extremist for justice -- 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ -- 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.' Was not Martin Luther an extremist -- 'Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.' Was not John Bunyan an extremist -- 'I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.' Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist -- 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.' Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist -- 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice -- or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?"

11. ACTS WHICH MAY PRECIPITATE VIOLENCE - "In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn't this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because His unique God consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."

12. THE HEROISM OF NONVIOLENCE - "One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and thus carrying our whole nation back to great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

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Letter Now Available, Public Domain, With MP3

The "Letter From The Birmingham City Jail" was handwritten by Martin Luther King on April 16, 1963, then slipped out of the jail, turned over to his assistants on the outside, typed, copied, and widely disseminated to various organizations and individuals as an "open letter" in order to generate public support for Dr. King and his civil rights activities.
As an open letter, made available to the Public for publication without restriction, it of course immediately entered the Public Domain and was never thereafter eligible for copyright protection.

The first version of this letter which I could find was published with King's approval and encouragement, without copyright notice, in May of 1963 by the American Friends Service Committee. It, too, is clearly in the Public Domain. I have several reprints of it, and you can get them, too, by purchasing them from http://www.afsc.org/resources/items/birmingham_jail.htm .

At some later date, Dr. King revised this first version of the letter and created a second version -- a more polished version, with numerous minor changes -- which he then published, with copyright notice. It is this second version which is now widely available in books and on the Internet, with copyright now claimed by the heirs of the King estate. So this second version is protected by copyright, but that copyright does not apply to any of the first-version text which had already entered into the Public Domain, only those parts which were new to the second version. The second version shows a date of "April 16, 1963," in the text, but that is the date of the handwritten original Public Domain first version, not the date of the copyrighted second version.

I am now republishing this original Public Domain first version to the Internet; and I am keeping it in the Public Domain. I could have edited it, and written some comments, and placed my copyright notice on the whole thing, thereby inhibiting its free and open dissemination. Instead, I am encouraging all people to copy it freely, reprint it, repost it, discuss it, critique it, and share it with all people everywhere, as Dr. King originally intended forty-three years ago, when he wrote it in jail and freely turned it loose into the world.

An HTML page with the complete text of the letter and its history is located at http://www.loveallpeople.org/letterfromthebirminghamcityjail.html Public Domain.

An ASCII unformatted text version of the letter, Public Domain, is located at http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/birminghamjail.txt

A HUGE MP3 file, also in the Public Domain, with 19.4 megs of data and a forty-six minute playing time, is located at http://www.text-to-speech.org/birminghamjail.mp3
with backup at http://www.patriot.net/users/bmcgin/birminghamjail.mp3

An HTML version of this message is located at http://www.loveallpeople.org/martinlutherkingforeverybody.html

Blessings to you. May God help us all.

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http://www.LoveAllPeople.org

Rev. Bill McGinnis is an Internet Christian minister, writer and publisher. He is Director of LoveAllPeople.org, a small private think tank in Alexandria, Virginia, and all of its related websites, including (more...)

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