Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta, and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever it affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara.

Today is January 15th, 2024. It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. To honor Dr. King, I wanted to focus on his iconic 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a document that has called millions to action and activism, in addition to being a profoundly beautiful piece of writing. I’m honored to be joined by Dr. Clayborne Carson to discuss the lyricism and legacy of King’s letter. Dr. Carson is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University. In 1985, Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, asked Carson to serve as the inaugural director of Stanford’s King Papers Project, an effort to publish a definitive collection of Dr. King’s writings and letters. The project eventually grew into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, which Carson also oversaw for many years. He has written and edited many books on Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, and in October was honored with the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award. Dr. Carson, welcome to the show.

Clayborne Carson:

Good to talk to you, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

So there are so many things to talk about when we remember and commemorate and celebrate the life of Dr. King. I thought we would bite off one thing. And that’s his famous iconic, I use the word lyrical, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which I’ve always thought of as a great piece of literature. Is it fair to call it literature?

Clayborne Carson:

I think so. It was written under unusual circumstances. He was in a jail cell. But it was definitely well-written.

Preet Bharara:

I think about the Nobel Prize. And many people are aware of the fact that Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize. And when you ask them, they often think it must’ve had to do with World War II and he won the Nobel Prize for Peace. He did not. He won the Nobel Prize for literature. And I’ve often thought, just not to overly belabor the point about King’s writing ability, that he might also have been a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. Is that an overstatement?

Clayborne Carson:

I think that’s something, I look upon him as somebody who was preparing for those moments when he could either give a great speech like the “I Have a Dream” speech, or write a great document like “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. And he didn’t live nearly as long as Winston Churchill. He was assassinated very young. He wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail when he was 34. And I’ll tell you, when I was a young person in middle school, high school, anyone over the age of 30 I thought was ancient. So it didn’t strike me when I first was learning about Dr. King, how very young he was. And now that I’m in my 50s, I find it rather extraordinary. How often do we have someone who is that young and that mature?

Clayborne Carson:

Not often, but I think you have to explain him by looking at his background. He grew up, his father was a preacher, his grandfather was a preacher. In some ways, he’s preparing for those moments all of his life, even though he doesn’t know what he’s preparing for. He thinks he might just be preparing to be a good minister. But I think that when we look back, we can see that in so many ways his life was a preparation for those great moments of the 1960s and when he became the spokesperson for a movement.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about the letter and maybe lay some foundation for it. So obviously, as the title suggests, he wrote it while he was in jail after a protest, and he wrote it to respond to criticism from white clergymen about his protest tactics. He spends a lot of time in the letter criticizing and indicting the “white moderate.” My first question is, before you give us the sort of the background and the context for this is, do you find it at all quaint today for there to have been so much criticism of a nonviolent movement?

Clayborne Carson:

Not really. I think you always see people who are saying, “Slow down. Be patient. Don’t try to rush things.” And I think it is one of the great dialogues of history of when is the time right? And I think for him, Birmingham was the crucial point in his life. I had the privilege of meeting Fred Shuttlesworth, and Fred Shuttlesworth writes him in the 1950s and saying, “You need to come to Birmingham. Why? Because segregation is the strongest in places like Birmingham and particularly in Alabama. And Birmingham is its strong point. And if you can break segregation there, you can break it anywhere.”

Now, King gets this letter I think in 1957. And he kind of puts it aside because he said, “Things are tough elsewhere. The last thing I want to do is,” the Freedom Writers went to Birmingham and they all got beaten up and a lot of bad things. Your own home, Fred Shuttlesworth, he would say, “They blew it up while you were inside it.” You were somehow that 1% of the people who can survive their entire house being blown up and come out of it without even getting injured. So you’ve had a lot of luck, but Birmingham is a dangerous place. It was called Bombingham in the movement because many of the segregationists knew how to use dynamite. There was a lot of mining in Alabama. And so a lot of the anti-integration activities were involved blowing up people’s homes if they moved into the wrong neighborhood, blowing up Shuttlesworth’s house. So ultimately we know later bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church and killing four young girls.

So it was a very dangerous place and Martin Luther King was hesitant to go there. Fred Shuttleworth’s saying, “You’ve got to come here.” Martin kind of fails to do very much in Albany, Georgia. And I think it’s only after that that he says, “I really have to respond to Fred Shuttlesworth trying to convince me to come to Birmingham.” And in that year, he makes his effort to bring the movement there.

Unsurprisingly, he gets a strong opposition. That’s the year that the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” The police chief there is a staunch segregationist. So he knows he’s going to face a strong opposition. And sure enough, simple protests don’t work. They just throw people in jail when he comes there in April of 1963. And then he faces the problem of, “Do I go to jail,” and, “Do I protest?” And especially after he receives an injunction saying that if he goes to jail, he won’t even have a trial. One of the things about an injunction for anyone is that if you break it, all the judge has to say, “You broke my injunction. You’re in jail until I let you out.”

So that’s what happens. It comes around Easter Sunday. He decides he has to break the injunction. Sure enough, he’s thrown in jail and then he picks up the newspaper and finds out about this letter, this cautionary letter, from the white clergy in town basically saying, “Be patient. We’re with you.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, go slow.

Clayborne Carson:

“Go slow. You’re rushing things.” And I think that that sets him off.

Preet Bharara:

Did it anger him or do you think was he patient?

Clayborne Carson:

I think he was angry. Because that was not what he would expect from his supporters. So I think he feels that he has to answer it. And by the way, no one else in his organization thinks, “Why are you wasting all this time?” I worked for a long time with Clarence Jones, his lawyer. He came out to California and lived out here for a while. And Clarence was saying that was his advice. “Why are you spending so much time?” And he told Clarence, “Look, I think I have to respond to this.” And Clarence actually smuggled it out of the jail cell and brought it over to the Southern Christian Leadership Headquarters. And it was just written on whatever Martin had available, newspapers, scrap paper, whatever. And they actually put it together in that office.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Look, one of the best paragraphs ever written to my mind is in this letter and the most forceful answer he gives to the moderate white clergy who voiced their criticism, I’ll just read a part of it. He writes in Letter from Birmingham Jail, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor.” And then he says, and this is the paragraph that I think I’ve read 1,000 times.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the sting dots 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, and even kill your Black brothers and sisters.

Preet Bharara:

Describing the plight of Black Americans in that time. And he says-

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

When you are forever fighting a degrading and degenerating sense of nobodiness, then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

Preet Bharara:

Are there particular passages in that letter that speak to you?

Clayborne Carson:

I think that’s certainly one of them. And I think that it’s an answer that many people have given over the years with respect to social change. People who understand the pain of discrimination are less patient with those who are saying, “Well, eventually it’ll change.”

Preet Bharara:

Right. Stands to reason.

Clayborne Carson:

Yeah. I think they’re the ones who are saying, “Look, we’ve been waiting. Somebody’s been waiting for a long time.” And you can say that about today’s problems. Many people have spent their lives under oppressive conditions and we tell them, “Oh, be patient. Things will change.” So I think it’s that kind of letter that anybody in a struggle, and particularly because he knows that Birmingham is the crucial place. That if he could win there, look at what happened right after the Birmingham campaign. President Kennedy decides to introduce civil rights legislation. Other people in the movement decide to have a march on Washington. And guess who they invite to give the concluding speech? It’s Martin Luther King.

If he had failed in Birmingham, do you think that would’ve happened? Fred Shuttlesworth was not even invited to speak there, but Martin Luther King not only is given the final speech, but everyone else is limited to five to seven minutes. Bayard Rustin comes to him and says, “Look, you’re the final speech. You’re not limited to five to seven minutes. If you want to go a little bit longer, you can. And no one’s going to stop you.” And that last half of his speech is the “I Have a Dream” speech, that if he would not have given that, it was, we have the actual text of the speech that he brought up to the podium. It does not say, “We shall overcome.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Clayborne Carson:

And that’s what made him famous. That was, by the way, my first demonstration, going to the march.

Preet Bharara:

That was a good inaugural demonstration for you to attend, sir.

Clayborne Carson:

It was good that I didn’t think that all demonstrations would be like that.

Preet Bharara:

Maybe a little bit of a letdown after that.

Clayborne Carson:

Right, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

What’s also striking to me in the letter, and I should note for folks, it’s not book length, but it’s not short. It’s not a cable hit. It’s not a letter to the editor. It’s not an op-ed in a newspaper. It goes on at some length. And the patience with which, despite his anger that you’ve described, the patience with which he sort of explicates the reasons for his methodology of non-conformity and non-violence, I find very striking. Because he understands the sort of philosophical paradox that he’s engaged in. And he writes, for example, speaking of the clergy who criticized him-

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools. At first glance, it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws, just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility, to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all.

Preet Bharara:

How do you think that explanation struck the ears of his critics?

Clayborne Carson:

I think eventually they were embarrassed that they had questioned him. It’s interesting, when I got to that point in the King papers and we had to get releases from all of the ministers. And some of their offspring, most of them had passed away, but their offspring were kind of embarrassed that, “Our father or grandfather wrote this letter cautioning Martin Luther King.” And I said, “Well, yes, you have to understand that. But we have to print their letter because it helps explain his letter.” So I think that this is something that has continued. And no one wants to be the last person to recognize injustice, and no one wants to be the last person to say-

Preet Bharara:

At some point people get on the bandwagon, when they see where the wagon is going, right?

Clayborne Carson:

Yeah, yeah. And I think with that letter also, Martin Luther King, it didn’t become famous immediately. He sent it to the New York Times and their first response was, “It’s too long. We can’t publish this.” And other newspapers turned it down. And so it was initially published in some publications with very little circulation. So it took months and maybe even years before people recognized how important that letter was.

Preet Bharara:

And as you pointed out, there were phrases that are used here that eventually became very famous and quoted. We’ve read some portions of it that are less well known, but one of the most famous, and I don’t know if he coined it for this letter or if he borrowed it from someplace, but we all know it now, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And then he goes on to say, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Did he have an awareness, do you know, of I’ve now use this word twice, but I’ll use it a third time because I think it is warranted, that his lyrical ability brought people along in the movement? Or was it a distraction in some way, his style, as opposed to his substance?

Clayborne Carson:

Aren’t you really just talking about what a good minister is?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Clayborne Carson:

I’m not a person who goes to church often, but I’ve heard a number of ministers, some of them good, some of them not so good. But the ones who are good are the ones who say something memorable.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Clayborne Carson:

And it might be simply making you think about how do you make moral choices? And it’s a difficult thing to do. Simply being religious, as we can see from this example, the critics are religious people, so simply being religious doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to make the right choice in all circumstances. And I think we should remember that, that it doesn’t make you perfect. It gives you a lot more tools to think it through. And I think that that’s one of the things that gave King an advantage is that that’s what he had been doing throughout his professional life. It wasn’t that long, but you go back to his earliest speeches, and they all present people with moral choices. He’s using religion as a way of teaching people how to make those choices. And that’s something that’s quite different from many ministers, by the way.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Clayborne Carson:

Not all of them have that mission.

Preet Bharara:

Before we go, I just thought since we are speaking for the holiday where we commemorate Dr. King, and I think there’s essentially unanimity about the value and merits of celebrating this person on this day. But one of my earlier memories when I was growing up in the ’80s when I started to become someone who watched the news and think about current affairs, you want to remind people how tough a battle that was and how as recently as the ’80s, there were lots of people who did not think this person should be honored with a holiday.

Clayborne Carson:

I think that it’s even more than that. One of the things that might be striking to many people is to understand that this had a political cost, for the people who supported the Civil Rights legislation. The 1964 election was the last time that a majority of white Americans voted for a Democrat.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Clayborne Carson:

That hasn’t happened since, and we have to think about that. It’s almost like not only King paid a price, he was assassinated, but many people have paid the price of standing up for what they think is right. And it’s a continuing process. And I think we need to think about that even in today’s world, that it is sometimes difficult to make the right choice and stick with it.

Preet Bharara:

That is absolutely true. On that note, Dr. Carson, thank you for your scholarship. Thank you for all your work in keeping the legacy of Dr. King alive. I commend “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to anyone who hasn’t read it, and even if you have, and it’s been a while, it’s worth reading again. Thank you so much.

Clayborne Carson:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The editorial producer is Noa Azulai, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Nat Weiner, and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.