Carl Kruse is on break. This is a guest post from Brent Harrison.
Some time ago I got together with a friend on Martin Luther King Day and to honor the man we read together his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” in which King answered his critics who called his activities “untimely and unwise” with one of the best justifications for civil disobedience found anywhere. As King urged local authorities in the South to obey federal anti-discrimination laws but at the same time encouraged violation of local ordinances that were discriminatory, e.g., he advocated following the law on one hand but breaking it on the other, he found the need to reconcile both actions and does so in his letter.
King also wrote here about the need to act sooner rather than later, what makes for just versus unfair laws, and ruminates on the interconnectedness of all of us in a beautiful discussion of ethics found in few other modern American letters.
In what has now become something of a tradition, on every Martin Luther King Day I re-read his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” and encourage everyone who can to do so.
The link below is provided courtesy of the University of Pennsylvannia.
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Happy Martin Luther King Day in the U.S.
Carl Kruse
https://carlkruse.org
CONTACT: Carl AT carlkruse DOT com
The blog’s last post was on the Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami.
Original rough draft of “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” by MLK
Whoa. The letter is a touch dated but still delivers one heck of a moral and intellectual wallop! Thanks Carl.
The letter takes all of 20 minutes to read and rewards the reader so richly for such little time spent.
– Carl Kruse
I can’t believe I have not run into King’s letter before.
Just finished reading it and this underscores in my mind even more the man’s intellectual genius and moral courage.
Buster
P.S. With thanks to Carl Kruse
Many thanks for sharing this.
It’s become a tradition here to re-read Martin Luther King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail every year on the celebration of his birthday.
So refreshing. And would that we had more individuals like him in the world today.
Carl Kruse
By the way, the U Penn site listed in the original post has plenty of information on Martin Luther King for anyone interested in the life of this exceptional man.
Carl Kruse