interested in giving some sort of act of violence, and arrest them, who prosecuted him according to some sort of law which is conspiracy or obstruction. but through these operations identify them first. i think it's easy to be empathetic to the fbi's view. the. i try to talk about this in the book is if you're a case agent and yet this guy setting i want to bomb the bombing, i want to bomb the subway system, you don't want to be the guy who says let's just ignore him and his six months later she does commit an act of terrorism. i think it's easy to understanunderstan d why the fbi would pursue these kind of cases. but what i put in the book is that is yet to be an example of someone who on their own is incapable of terrorism, someone who's a lot about, someone who doesn't have any weapons who on a chance meeting needs an al qaeda operative and says, hey, here's a bomb. these sting operations are an evolution of drug stings where

in the movies has been glamorized were a guy has an empty briefcase and people believe there's cocaine inside and hand over the money, the person opens it, it's empty, they rush in and they rush him to -- they arrest them. they're not buying or selling drugs on the sting operation. drugs are not difficult and they are not safe. but what is difficult to obtain is the weapons people use antiterrorist operation. has yet to be the case where we have someone who on his own is a sympathizer, crosses over to operator and wants to do an act of terrorism, that just hasn't happened to date. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> up next on booktv, jonathan rieder recounts dr. martin luther kings juniors letter from birmingham jail. he reports on the effect the letterhead on the civil rights

movement. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. >> good evening. welcome. very pleased you all joined us this evening. also want to welcome our good friends from c-span who are taping tonight's program. it will be broadcast on booktv at a future time. also please know we have books for sale in the back, and i'm sure our office will be happy to sign those for you. the doors are locked. you cannot leave until all the books have been sold off lack country -- [laughter] thomas parker said the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice. i was thinking about that today as we set up and prepared for this program because today is

april 9. on april 9, 1963, 50 years ago this very day, for young black college students walked in the front door of the building downstairs. they went over to a table. they sat down and started to read. or as one of them described to me later, fake raid because he was scared he is about to rest the. birmingham libraries in those days are segregated. we have blacks libraries for african-americans, but this building was closed to blacks. they could not enter the building. they could not use the collection you. those four students came in that day, sat down, did what to do in a library. they read for a while, but also knocked down a wall. the next day more students came. they sat down, they read. one of them went to the desk and asked for a library card. on the next day, april 11, the library board, somewhat

reluctantly, voted but then into the arc of justice, the library board voted to desegregate birmingham public library. that was one day before dr. martin luther king was arrested and began writing his letter from birmingham jail. think about the fact of this building that 50 years ago tonight was closed to african-americans, the house is one of the finest research collections in existence on the civil rights movement and the african-american experience. and it's out of the election in part of the book we are going to celebrate tonight has been researched and written. we are pleased to have two authors with us tonight. first we have jonathan rieder, professor of sociology at bernard college, columbia university. is the author of "the word of the lord is upon me," and has

been a regular commentator on tv and radio, a contributor to "the new york times" book review at a contributing editor to "the new republic." also with us is diane mcwhirter. diane is a pulitzer prize-winning author of "carry me home: birmingham, alabama - the climatic battle of the civil rights revolution." which has just been re- released and a new updated paperback issue. she's also the author of the dream for freedom, history of the civil rights movement for young readers, and she writes regular before "the new york times," "usa today" and slate. everyone please join me in welcoming jonathan rieder. [applause]

>> i should say not to add luster to my resume, but just to reassure that i'm not a self-righteous northerner, but have also written about white race and -- race and racism in brooklyn as well. let me say first off with certain humility is in order. for one thing it's just a tremendous delight to be here with diane mcwhirter whose telling of "carry me home" as an epic and unsurpassed as the events in birmingham themselves or certainly has the epic quality that what people did in this town deserve. and i can tell, i don't want to be too gracious, buy my book first but his point of new stuff iin the new edition, so by that, too. there's another reason for humility. i couldn't have done it again with two very special people. our host for the evening, who

many, many years ago first prepared my way in the full comic collection can generally get along took me to get used to the idea of a collection like that. you may use to that. so i think also the things that his institution, the birmingham public library, has done in making this history alive but i also think, need to thank another gifted artist and a wonderful person, laura anderson of the birmingham civil rights institute, for similar kind of my dependence i must say, she was the one who first connected me to some of the relatively unknown tapes of dr. king, some of which is the sound system doesn't tell us tonight i will put a little bit. and different that any ability in my try to bring alive the mass meetings with the sound of trade two, king in majesty, king in bitterness and resentment,

all the different sides of king i owe those recordings, and the man who donated them, reverend c. herbert oliver, another freedom fighter in alabama who was fighting racism and segregation back in 1948. but i want to say what jim and laura and their institutions is not simply logistical and practical. the words make it possible for us never to forget the courage and the blood and sacrifice out of which america was born into a democracy. so there's a sacred as well as a logistical aspect in which these two research institutions do. because as we know from a whole lot of other things, if you going to avoid the past and understand something like never again, you have to know how to remember educate remember sentimentally or dishonestly. jim and laura makth

possible. and, finally, and most importantly if there's any humility here, it's come and gone to think of dr. king here in birmingham, in a mass meeting and i'm paraphrasing and taking liberties, but that was his creative use of language so it's in keeping with him, that of a written about history, the people in birmingham made that history. and in rising up 50 years ago, they, and i really should for some the people in the room, you didn't make own history in birmingham but you helped make the nation a new. and i'll come back to that because that ultimately is the meaning of the 50th year, we don't want to really get into some notion that that history was easy. we can be proud in america but we don't honor whatever the value of the constitution and the declaration are by pretending that was a time of unfreedom in order to congratulate ourselves that we

got to the promised land. i should have -- i should add, i will add quickly is in my other work on king i spent time with a foot soldier. we know the famous people, but they're all those amazing colleagues of dr. king the winning to selma and women to monopolist and went into a dozen other places, people like willie bolden and j.d. johnson. i never got a chance to meet james orange but i did come had the privilege of interviewing andrew some years ago, that man of gentle defiance. he reminds us it was the own people on the streets of birmingham who made flesh the theories at the dr. king put forward in the letter from birmingham jail. when he talked about extremist be love and justice, it was all

the people in the alabama christian movement for human rights and james r. and andrew mrsa and all those young people, and we can't forget, let history forget what they did as well. in this audience on a course that a lot of time rehashing the dramatic details of the freedom struggle, but it do need to set the context before get into the letter and don't try to do this pretty quickly. because when i'm done i'm going to make sure that with some questions with jim and diane but we also want to get to those of you in the audience. so what is that history? the mass means vibrating with the sound of on my way to game and land, but to find young people who stand down the diabolical con or, connor finally losing it on may 3, and the world owes him greatly as

president kennedy once said, bobby kennedy said, too, actually, that the movement owed connor are finally losing it and becoming a problem within the movement drama that would awaken the nation. and the eight clergyman who ended up criticizing king may not have liked attention, but, in fact, within one day, the very next morning after that dog was biting that black young man him and he was on the paper of front pages of "the new york times," kennedy was sending the u.s. attorney for justice down to birmingham, and within days they were thinking, oh, we may not be able to avoid this as a moral issue. we may need to think about a civil rights bill, and all that begins, again, american democracy wasn't vanquished, vindicated in birmingham, but it started a movement that has

changed the world we live in. now, i'm not going to say much, i'll say one sentence, king in the letter is talking about the gospel of freedom. i have brought the gospel of freedom like the eighth century b.c., or like paul going throughout the greek or roman world and answering the macedonian call. it's not just for the hometown. is going out to preach the. and it preaching to whites, but dr. king always knew there was a gospel of freedom for blacks and the mass meetings were about his convincing them that you must deliver yourself. and god will not take you there simply because you pray. and king back in march before the demonstrations have gotten going, you hear him in the voice of god say to moses, tell the children of israel to go forward. why are they worrying? go forward, and king says as if

he is god, i can't do it all myself. so that's the other drama of black awakening within the meetings. and i'll say less about that in the questions we can come back to the. so we have after much indecisi indecision, the movement is not going well in those days of april 3 through april 8, 9, 10, 11. and so on good friday in those early mornings, april 12, trying to decide to violate injunction and go to jail. he would suffer with his savior on the cross. how many times did he preach, they can put you in jail and transport you to glory, but once in jail, the jail became a dungeon of despondency. king spiraled down into depression and panic, and he had lost his spirit as a freedom warrior. and then everything changed. he read the statement of eight

whites, alabama clergymen criticizing him for being an extremist, and this is untimely, the new mayor is going to usher in a new day. why didn't you wait ask and suddenly king is propelling himself up that, out of the valley up the mountain on a tide of indignation. so i want to start with when we think about the letter and where we get it wrong to yes, it is about injustice is here. i am here because the justices here. it's universal. and yes, it is a treatise on civil disobedience, but it begins as a black man's cry of black paint and black anger. moral anger but anger. so yes, that's not what it begins. and to understand the letter we need to keep that in mind. so the letter and the men that

come the rippling of the pages of the letter, as i tried to fredom."e in my book, "gospel of it's not driven by fancy philosophy. he's not a dreamer. and that man in the letter has a glorious complexion. let's think about, the letter is hard to get a handle on because it's not one thing. academics try to figure, they play put up a fight. is a public letter? is it a this, is it a that? is it a formal letter? there are those constant display of these incredible expletive manners. we know how furious teen -- trendy is that those minustah for criticizing the they call me an extremist? my dear fellow clergyman, precious gentility. when he is mad he says, i'm disappointed. i hope you can now see this

patient man. why is he wasting his time with white preachers is what my author told me he was thinking? we have an insurgency run. we've got my mass meetings. and king is in a snit over these white clergy who, in a different way, said to me, it's what we expect because they were doing evil or compromising with evil. so we have the patient manner we can do. we are the professional king who lectures on the meaning of moral law. we're the tour guide king who takes whites into black phone ability. when you have been humiliated him a when a black brothers and sisters are lynched, when you have to explain to a six-year-old girl that his daughter, that is yolanda, why she can't go to find down.

when you live with a debilitating sense of nobody miss, and just when you think tanking is going to explode in anger because it is the collected people, when you, when you, when you, when everything gets in the rhythm or torches 76 word sentence, he suddenly pulls out of it like an airplane that swarms in and says back to you, the clergyman, maybe you will understand why we have it hard to wait. there's an eerie toward king takes, voyage into the depth of the white christian soul. he mentions the rabbi buddies focus on his christian clergy. and he says i have gone through the wonderful spires of the way churches in wonder who worships there, who is their god that sounds like so cerebral and eliminating. but there is cold distance like an anthropologist looking at a

different tribe who doesn't even share perhaps the same god as king. who is their god? there is colt knost there. masquerading the anger -- colt knost there. there's that embrace of extremism after he spent paragraph saying no, no. , we're not rekcus. i'm not an extremist their father said the more i thought about it in an extremist. jesus was an extremist. team uses the words of these indisputable authorities like a boxer smacking his opponent. boom, boom, boom. and he ends up saying i don't really care how you label me are about white a penny. i'm done trying to convince you of that. more than anything else, the letter becomes a relentless smack down of ordinary white people. we need to understand the radicalism of kings

disappointment. ordinary white people who consider themselves decent but never burned with indignation over the fact of jim crow. their sin was silence and not coming out and saying, love your brother, but annika. they have a law not because it's the law, not because law and order, but because he and she all your brothers and sisters. and when king present elsewhere, of course he is the voice of st. paul saying this is blasphemy. it's a smack down of ordinary white people which includes the kennedy administration that he keeps in weight as well. so these eight clergyman is not that he is not answering them,

it's not that they have exasperate him, but they perfectly distill all of this reluctance of the white nation that cannot come and i'm quoting king, he says i should have realized that the oppressed cannot understand the yearnings and longings of the oppressed. very powerful. and we don't think that this king who celebrates the dreamer as he tough chastise her, as this furious truth telling suggest and the gospel trigger i can't show there's a transition and worst edged in which the first part is it's about trying to persuade whites to be into humanity, trying manners. but halfway through the changes. and he said i must confess i've been disappointed. the whole second half is the profit, old testament prophet chastising first white moderates

and then the white church. it's as if we are meeting king annual. we are not really, it's a team that many african-americans them from the mass meetings and preaching new. the ambassador of brotherhood turns out to be not just a dreamer, but a christian warrior. he did not think that many whites have much empathy or willingness to act on the empathy for black people. he wasn't naïve about the power of moral appeal to change white parts without protest. with that nonviolent demonstrations, without pressure. i should've realized, he said, and i'm going again because it's so important to understand, that few mayors of the oppressive weight can understand the deep p groans. its axis stake in the there's the language of oppressor and oppressed the exodus moved here.

despite the dignity and refine this, you can sense the controlled anchor roiling close to the service. if we just read we can miss a. he says, for years now i have heard the word of weight. it rings in the air of every negro with piercing familiarity. king is now speaking, not under as a universal mankind, but as a black man. it rings in his ear. it's every negro. it includes him. it pierces him as well. so i want to start moving towards the end, and we can develop some of these themes and others wherever diane and jim want to take it. but i want to mention some amazing things that happened towards the end. at the end of the letter king's observes, even if the white church does not come to our aid i have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in birmingham.

let's think about that. any of you know this history. he is still in jail. there's little debate if he didn't do some editing after zell but it's irrelevant. most of it was done. most of us edit our stuff and would, most of us do. it is there substantial. so and we are now two weeks before d-day. why is he competent? blacks had not risen up after he went to jail to say, we're going to jail, too. where was his confidence? we know the answer to this. it is his faith in god. what he almost always said a black and white audience, he doesn't say at the end at "letter from birmingham jail." he doesn't say my god is able. the resurrection follows the crucifixion. all the tenants of his faith, in a sermon or a quasi-sermon,

addressed to fellow clergyman, he refuses to share a spiritual thought with them. i think it's because he has to stay in an anchor for the but he's not going to go there. it's so rare he doesn't go, a man as a practitioner of theology of hope. nor does he say i have an american dream of black and white it's holding hands together. doesn't quote the exceptional american nation, the democracy is destined for america. so there's a mystery here. and as i said we can go into it more if you're interested, or diane and jim is. i hope will have a chance to explore, unraveling it is key to understanding king in the letter in a new way. i will simply say that years before the flowering of black pride, king was finding faith in

his love of his people. not just mankind, but his people, in the many of the slave ancestors. and the to find grace in what he called in the letter, he shared this with white people but he doesn't just for black audience. the vitality of our slave forebears are if we were able to survive the inexcusable cruelties of slavery that setbacks in birmingham will not keep us back. and so i will leave it at that for now. now, it's easy to see this lurch forward in birmingham is inevitable, as if we were a fallible nation that was just automatically becoming perfect, the perfectible nation. but as king sought, america was a nation in need of redemption, not a redeemer nation.

it's there in his mass meeting. it's better when he is preaching. that becomes clear from winning most dramatically discovered in "gospel of freedom." there was a alternative version of the letter, that nobody knows about that king preached and 16th street baptist church two days after he gets out of jail. he repeats many of the lines in the letter but this is for a black audience so is not trying to persuade entities using it to goad them on. but it allows us to at the sound back to the written text and by adding the saddleback, we add the emotion that is there. you can hear the angry trim and king's voice as he declares, and we are through with segregation now, henceforth and forever. it's the same voice you hear on may 3, the day after, the hours after con are used poses and the dog and king says, our black faces will stand up to conners

white tanks. it's a defiance, christian king but a defiant king. bear with me. we'll see if this work together does i will do it. but he is better than i am. so i would rather he do it. >> we were here before thomas jefferson. when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of light through lie -- [inaudible] go back and tell them, the nude administration, -- the new administration, where

is the new moral -- [inaudible] and we've got to lead this nation know we are through with segregation. [inaudible] >> at the close of that spoken black version of the letter, king and actions freedom bells ringing from every mountain in

the united states. from red mountain in alabama, and the imagines the days where blacks are able to sing "my country tis of thee," sweet land of liberty. and i'll just close with this thought, with this celebraticelebrati on of the american nation, after all, a few months later he repeats this. this is in anticipation of i have a dream, when he sings "my country tis of thee." hardly. his pronouncement in that church, that great sacred church, 63 baptist church, if america is to be a great land was a top, it wasn't yet a great land. if blacks were to be able to sing with new meaning "my country tis of thee," if they were singing, able to sing at all, came less a series of deaths. if we will protest together get

it will go to jail together, then we will be able to sing. in short, the nation most white americans thought they lived in wouldn't exist until black people, and especially the black people of birmingham, help create it. thank you. [applause] >> welcome back i should say. i want to just recognize a few people who are here who were and are our freedom riders. one is catherine brooke brooks who was one of, part of the second wave of freedom riders in 19 see one. she was part of the national student movement, and is now a local icon. can you stand up? thank you.

[applause] >> and is doug jones still here? doug jones was the u.s. attorney here in birmingham who prosecuted the bomber up of the 16th street baptist church in 2001-2002. [applause] >> so i guess it seems the lot in life to establish the birmingham narrative of great events, and so to give little context about the letter from the birmingham standpoint, because it sort of fades into this is him that we're all in the midst of, especially in this year of reconciliation is him, which is to try, this yearning that this country feels towards what a friend of mine who is an activist paul calls the

affirmative intellectual handshake. and when you look back on the grand narrative came to me as kind of emerging as an explainer and the human resources facilitator. and probably don't know anything about the birmingham store you might think that king wrote the united states, people read it and said, oh, yeah, that's great. why didn't you say so? now i understand everything. but what happened at the time was the letter which teams chief of staff walker had seen as a propaganda opportunity actually, he couldn't get anybody interested in. the letter was typed up and sent around, there's also a copy in jim's archives in the birmingham police surveillance file. nobody was really interested in it. "the new york times" magazine had earlier assigned, approached king about writing a letter from albany job which was the previous campaign in albany, georgia. he had got out of jail too fast

and he couldn't do. so at this point, they couldn't get king, the new york times magazine, you know, they couldn't, assigning editor who was a poet who died recently couldn't get past the top editor. so basically in this figure who covered everything, and the mother-in-law, there's only one page in your on the letter from birmingham jail. the reason is that it made not one bit of difference at the time to end the way i sort of look at it is that birmingham kind of redeemed the letter and it's because of birmingham that is now his sacred text in our democracy. and i was interested in, sort of tease john hathaway historians have to write about something that's the often read story, how

am i going to come up with something new? and i think the letter itself as well as the "i have a dream" speech have become part of this reconciliation. so after reading john's book and i'm thinking, this is, john has really carved out his own angle on his and his got to be first comedy in history to refer to dr. king as badass. so i have to give it to you, john. but tell me about how you, you know, i read the letter as sort of a seething document. but still fundamentally diplomatic. so can you talk a little bit about how, wasn't partly listening to the recordings and hearing him cut loose before the black church? >> [inaudible] >> what i found were no alternate versions, the fact

that nobody, nobody knew about it. and the fact that even though you get the seething from the words of the letter, it's just unmistakable when you hear it. but the other thing is, in my last book i've spent more than a decade tracking down recordings of dr. king and realized how much british there was to the man who was left out -- richness. so i've been discovering these other sides of king from talking to all of king's colleagues in tracking down come again, the ordinary sermons. i had a sense of, i had already discovered how important black pride, well, it wasn't a black nationalist. he wasn't so far away other thing that more radical people were arguing, so hearing king, both of this preached a version of the letter but also more generally, really changed my

idea what king the man was about. and the other part, for just briefly, is i taught the letter for 20 years. it's such a complicated document. i thought i knew it and every few years i kept seeing things that i had not seen that were right in front of my eyes. so it's only in the last couple of years that i thought, what is the meaning of the fact that he doesn't address the clergyman at the end spiritually? i can't find almost any other moment in which king doesn't end like that. and so there's detective work involved that involve both, again those recordings, see herbert oliver gave to the institute, but also my reacquainted with tinker and that's how i put it. it's all there, it's like meeting dr. king a new.

so you're a professor of sociology at barnard, so how did you teach the letter during those 20 years? >> i didn't teach that in a theology course but i love writing and a teaching first year writing similar adages thought this is a great workout, forget about the substance for them and. it is an amazing kind of artistic accomplishment. so did a lot of looking at the text an even as i'm starting to get into king i got took it out of assist local context. the anthropologists have a way of making everything proprietary or so and ethiopian anthropologist once referred -- tell me about your jew medallion that i think of your birmingham. you to take the letter and not seen as an intellectual document that it's something that comes out of those two moments, a faltering movement, the prison, and then the awakening.

it was my own evolution in many ways. >> what's the reaction you're getting? we are, as you said, we are often exposed to the i have a dream king sermon on the mount, sort of prophet. you talk about this seething, angry king. how do students respond to that? how is the response to the book is? >> i think the responses been really extraordinary so far, and it comes on a number of levels. last week i was on -- he was an you have got the tough king, but, of course, that's the letter came, not the dream king. i said no, no, no. wait, if you listen to i have a dream, the tough king is there. so then he said that that's in the first. i said no, no. it's in the second half, too.

king was a genius at hiding and insinuating. so we toned down the anger in the second part, but look at the substance. he repeats in the i have a dream, that same part from the preached sermon at the end of dream he says we will be able to sing "my country tis of thee" if we work together, if we protest together. so with trying to the substance never varies, but it is sometimes their in an insinuation, and a hand. and he's a genius of sort of adapting the tone to his intention. the march in washington he wasn't yelling at these eight clergyman who had made, walker said to me, his cup of endurance run over. he wanted a civil rights bill. he didn't want to chastise american namely, because

suddenly interracial groups were being that some as a result of birmingham. there were big demonstrations that were a run up to the march in washington, in los angeles, in detroit and chicago. so the clergy, not a clergy here, although one or two of them were perhaps overtime responded, but the rabbis and catholic priests and protestant ministers who were joining in. so king didn't want to kind of get in the face because he was welcoming those allies, but still the toughness is very much there. >> yes, i guess what you're saying him you haven't gotten any pushback for turning king into jeremiah wright. i'm just kidding, i'm just kidding. >> it's a great question because people come here, when my last book came out, there was a column on jeremiah wright in which he quoted by the word of the lord is upon me. he quoted jeremiah wright is not martin luther king.

we're not turning them into the right. but there's more that they are thinking that resonates with jeremiah wright come if you read most of his speeches, which is something tava smiley also said. so yes, i know, diane can be a bad as well. you are pushing me but it's a good point that there is a long tradition and african-american theology and preaching that has prophetic chastisement and there is the loving grace of the city. they are all part of king. they are there, the rebuke and electric that is why he said to me, look, he's telling them of the evil because that's what a preacher does and it prophet us, because they can be redeemed. and one way to think about it is dominant, but that's why the transition is in this point. when king is basically done

explaining. and that to me is the most significant part. he gets all that reasonable part under the way, and if you just read from where he says i must confess my jewish and christian brothers, and then, boom, it reminds you how complicated king's relationship was because he was so minorly and refined that never kept him from being tough. didn't come out tough, which joe once put to it commits, he was a gentle spirit with a tough message. alina most of us know, king was an inconvenient here. he meant to be inconvenient but america was a convenient king who makes us feel good. >> so let's transition into it more right afte now but i thinke should maybe read a little bit of his address to the moderates, right?

the single page in my book about this letter pretty much deals with his chastising of the moderates it and i think that probably most of my, i guess my biggest fear in terms of looking, asking my what i would've done back then, is what i've been a moderate? because the moderates do not do well in history, even the brave moderates to become liberals back then somebody like david then they will put a lot on the line. but if you read, went on to become mayor. he ousted bull connor from office. but a young lawyer. if you read his quote now from back then, he doesn't look good. and yet he was really brave and really progressive your i think i always wonder how, if you're a decent and we all know that we wouldn't have been in the clan or in the white council

probably. i always ask myself what i've had the courage to act on a conviction is only going to hurt me in order to maybe help somebody else? and then be marginalized because there was a word for people, white people in the south they didn't speak out and it was called the aristocracy of the damned fool. so if you're going to put yourself on the line, you're endangering yourself and your joined the aristocracy of the damned fool. so maybe that's why his address to the moderates really got me. you want to read all a bit of that? >> i do but i want to underline your point because i think it is essential. there's a tradition in white liberalism, or not even liberalism, the enlightened folk to define themselves in opposition to the redneck, to the primitive, this is true in brooklyn, in manhattan or down here. and there's that great statement

that ralph mcgill always had made him which is i've always had great sympathy for the redneck in the wall had. it is true they carry out the bombing, they do terrible things, but almost always at the beck and call of others of more respectability. and the second point that really i think diane makes, and is a prophetic point, which is none of us can be smug or self-righteous. so when rabbi grafton was mad when the northern liberal rabbis arrived on the seventh or eighth and walked down, you know, the 63 baptist church, i can which of the church, and he said you are here for two days and then you're going back to long island and you will be claimed as wonderful people but we are stuck here in birmingham. so even though he didn't give me

things that came, he had appointed. we don't know what we would do. many of us wish we had more courage. so that part i think is one of king's most important critiques. it's why he is not critiquing the violent ones. and it's why fred shuttlesworth who hears grafton company but how tough it is and the don't want to become visible because the clan, they don't want to get into this black-white fight, and here's a guy who has the courage to risk death for taking way more risks, and these people are complaining? he supposed to sympathize with the whites as a go slow? so these things are complicated and we want to be careful. that's laughing going back to the text, and as many of you know, jim beckett has sponsored a reading that has spread across the letter, across the country and the world which you should make sure you changed -- you say

something about. pretty extraordinary. the far reaches of the world, just like in europe and everywhere. as andrew young said to me, king preferred to speak rather than right, and we all know the. so if he could've delivered as he probably would have delivered it. >> you know after all that, where is -- here we go, okay. this follows a section in which, i'm going to focus on his criticism first of the white moderate. he hasn't gotten to the white church. listen to the poor trick of the white moderate, and he says lukewarm acceptance is harder

than outright hatred. i've almost reached the conclusion that the negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward should is not the white citizens council or the ku klux klan or the white moderate, and now here is a little portrait is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers the negative peace which is the absence attention to the positive peace, who constantly says i agree with you, but i cannot agree with your methods, who partner list of who believes he can set a timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time and to constantly advise is the negro to wait or a more convenient season. and listen to passive aggressive. i had hoped the white moderate would understand all this. that's like when you tell your kid, i'm very disappointed in you, right?

i would hope you would understand, but you didn't. and look what happens after he does that. the voice of the prophet insinuates itself because not long after it he says, we will have to repent in this getion n merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people, human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. now again, we know what he said in 16th street baptist church on april 22. we can add the sound back. he says wade, wait for a more convenient season. that's all we have ever heard. so that's the critique of the white moderate. and, finally, a white church that hides behind stained glass windows. he has now gone through this great trip, right? i have traveled, the

genteel precious king. i've traveled the length and breadth of alabama, mississippi, and all the other this out and states. sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings. i've looked at the most villagers with their loss to spirals pointing edward and the impressive education to over and over i found much to ask, what kind of people worship? who is their god? where were their voices when the lives of governor barnett dripped with words of interpositiointerposition an ob. where were they when governor wallace gave a call for to find and hatred? where were their voices of support when bruised and where he negro men and women decide to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest? he's contrasted that church with the early christian. and when he describes the christians they sound like the foot soldiers to they went into town and were called outside

agitators and extremists. because they were intoxicated by god, but and i would just read you one other aspect of the critique. now the preacher is back. he writes, -- i have lost a great line but i would play what he said, oh, how it blemished the body of christ the king is saying they get to give up on the white ecclesia's. pretty fancy topic he's talking that talk, but what he is saying is when he writes all, if you heard king as i have, when he preaches it once again, oh, how we have blemished the church of christ, the body of christ. so that's what he says. they have been conformists and not courageous. and, therefore, they are really

guilty of spiritual malpractice but one other thing he says, i have longed to the. right here is where he says, i have longed to give them say love the negro because he is your brother. ouch, it's tough. no matter, calling somebody lacking ecclesial may not be insulting their mama, but it's pretty tough it pretty tough when you're talking to your fellow christians. >> i think you make an important point in the book that when these moderates are appealing to the better nature of the south, it's not from a standpoint of justice but it's from the standpoint of law and order. that we should follow court orders because that's what a decent society does, not that we should treat our brothers as

equals. is because that's what a decent society does. i can do is very important to distinguish. really important and you said it well, king is contrasting that in his mind when he is on the conference, on race and religion in chicago in january of that year where he repeats much of the lines that will stream into "letter from birmingham jail." and there are seven or 800 white clergy, mainly from the north from every denomination. and what they are starting to say it is racism is a sin. edwin christian centuries publishers the letter from "letter from birmingham jail" on june 12, the day after kennedy's race speech, they remove the name of the eight clergymen because they realize this isn't just for the eight clergymen. they are just the ones who put king over the edge. this is for all of us bigger including themselves that the white church cannot afford to be

smug come and we need to think what does our faith really mean. >> that's exactly what i was going to bring up. it's kind of some kind of weird fluke, or weird consistency i guess i should say come of human nature that people, it's really hard for people to do something for the right reasons. and you see it come you know, even in the debate about torture now, it's like he have to prove that it doesn't work. in order to make your argument. you can't just say it's wrong, we don't do that. and what was kind of interesting with the eight clergymen, one of the reasons that they were so shocked that king had gone after them was that they had published a statement in january in protest of george wallace's segregation now, segregation forever inaugural address.

and for the first time they had gone, they have said it's wrong, and that was a really, that was a really notable departure for somebody to make up all these statements. so we listen to that now and it just seems so trivial for somebody to say that. but at the time they were really going out on a limb. so then winking, when they get back, came, they go all, we are so misunderstood. and the rabbi when interviewed him in the '80s was still complaining about how king -- that was what he taken away from this experience. >> [inaudible] >> rabbi was still complaining in the '80s when i talked to him that king had made them out to be bigots. he was still really sore about that. >> if we could collect a written question now and we will continue. go ahead and do that.

>> [inaudible] >> i would remind you of this. [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> i want, i was just a quick word because i know jim wants to follow the order of the questions, but i do give a great deal of respect, because he ended up understanding -- it is true, the eighth clergy were not all the same. there was the callous bishop carpenter whose response was inexcusable, and there was dora who became, he understood. he said i was against segregation but i didn't understand the way dr. king made it. and he went on to really embody the prophetic ministry of king. and after king was killed, he preached the word, the critique of moderate at the commemoration. because king loved to sample other people's language.

he would always quote people and imagine them quoting him. he would have loved the fact that he was quoting his own words back to him. it would've given such pleasure that he just stream that end and he became king in some sense. so you make a lovely point. very lovely point. >> thank you very much. [inaudible] >> i did not by diane, i have a little bit on bull connor. it's really, diane's book is, "carry me home" is an extraordinary voyage into that world. so absolutely, and it's terrifying and it really put you back in that time. but again, a very good point to keep in mind there. >> let me ask you, if you grew up outside it under segregation, you heard, always heard the

expression, extremists on both sides. and what that meant was that civil rights activists were considered to be the moral equivalent of the ku klux klan, considered comparable. and one of the brilliant passages in the "letter from birmingham jail," you could tell that he is being called extreme by the clergy, that the nerve on his temple starts going crazy. ..

>> they have been become adjusted to segregation. they are part of the upper and middle class and they don't want to rock the vote, and then there are these voices of hate. sometimes hatred of the white man, so think of what king is doing there in the sociological workers. he is seen as an extremist or a moderate like you. if i had my choice and i have these other people. he has now tried to do that. this is how you know that this gentleman is being nice and then he turns on a dime.

it's going back and forth, and he takes it right back he says, i think you to forgive me if i have showed an unreasonable impatience. who is begging and apologizing? to the white man? so he immediately says, if i am reasonably patient that says i beg god to forgive me when he basically is taken aback. it really matters what god thinks and not just the white people he apologizes to her. so he has that same quality, it looks like he acted diplomatically, but he takes it back in his because to find

justice is honest. the differences are miniscule. some scholars make a big deal of it. but one of the things that he took out between may and june and let me make sure that i have this there is an embrace of extremism. in the early version he said think about it. there were three in extremist on calvary. well, he always identified with jesus more than moses. if you listen to the weekly sermon over years, it is not

that important most of the time. so we see that jesus was an extremist. love those who hate you. bless those who despise you. and so again, to really appreciate the power of this letter, you have to see that this is something you are going to see, that i am okay with you come i want to approve of me. i'm going to show you that i am not what you think i am. and then he turns around and says, i am proud to be an extremist. >> we are what john mentioned,

what we are sponsoring next tuesday is a reading of this letter from jail. and it's a very simple idea and we decided that we would issue an invitation through the magic of the social media thing, it just took off. i can tell you that we have on the website a page where we are asked in everyone to know that we are going to the doing this and how you might do it. when i left my office to come up

here, we had 176 locations signed up so far. they are all over the world's. [applause] >> thank you. we have locations in 28 states. it's going to start in australia and it's going to come around the world. we have people in all sorts of countries, thailand, and ireland, germany. we have a teacher in taiwan who is teaching elementary students about this. they are going to read this letter and the students are going to write a letter to doctor king if you talk about

birmingham history or american history, there are two complementary impulses at work in the letter, one is the man who was a fighter for his people are in he never forgets that he is here. so there is nothing that he is doing in birmingham in particular, but also in the letter, that is including the sermons. it is the sin of this is that he is a rich man, that it wasn't his riches that makes him a

sinner. he did not recognize the gimpy beggar covered with sores. so in a sense for him, we have an obligation to respond to everybody. the white people on the sideline. so it is utterly sensible that over time this document has been read only as a birmingham document but as it says a comically, it takes a while to grow, this includes words spoken to mankind. it's a powerful document and it resonates at that very occasion. the freedom fighters in and to

pull a rarity speaks to this. to tell them thank you for teaching us eventually it leads to european and christian and goes to andrew young put it this way, the christian stream within the civil rights movement. it captures an important part of the movement and has been read

by people around the world and it has an affirmation of protest. in a reflection of their own struggles. seclude bisexual websites which translates this into what it means for gay people addressing white moderates. so the answer is part of that power is the artistry, part of the power is a statement of black defiance and christian forbearance, and the other part is the universal words spoken to

mankind. >> not being the angry black man. this person has asked a few realized that the main foe is the apathy of the complacent. he wanted to push blacks out of their comfort zones was wiped out of their comfort zone.

for both the oppressed and the oppressor. there is a disparity between rich and poor what we need to do is fill the promise. >> i think that it -- i think we need to use this to teach ourselves how to recognize the of and ability human progress has not come under inevitability. and i kind of thought that when i was younger. but there is this bit is getting better.

i think things keep coming around and i don't know that i believe that anymore. it's really important to be able to break the code and figure out when these injustices are coming around again. because i was under a different disguise. now we have used some of the tools of 1963 to fight back against the immigration law that is really part of this. we have been there before. the clergy was the first on that and they are ready to protect this. and a lot of people joined in as

well. maybe we'll get a little bit better as you go down into history. but it's the same issues that keep recurring. >> we misunderstood what he meant by the arc of justice. it's related to what he imagined god telling moses shall the children of israel. i am really repeating what i am just fed they didn't believe the arc of the universe without men and women doing the bending, and i hate to use a fancy word and i don't usually like them, but king's vision of deliverance is

quite different from this version he is also one of the great preachers of the 21st century and then he preaches and says, oh, he will part the waters. and his view was that god wants you to deliver yourself. and the universe requires that actual people been there. the face of the arc of justice works out because god is on their side. and that really brings us back to criminal justice and other things. as king would say today, our work is not done. he was a glass is half-full guy. just because all black people do not suffer from jim crow doesn't mean that there are plenty of others