'Letter from a Birmingham Jail'
- Joanne Jacobs
- Jan 16, 2023
- 1 min read
"We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom," Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. "Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny."
This deserves greater exposure:
KING (Stride Toward Freedom (1958) page 138):
I could not go to sleep. While I lay in that quiet front bedroom, with a distant street lamp throwing a reassuring glow through the curtained window, I began to think of the viciousness of people who would bomb my home. I could feel the anger rising when I realized that my wife and baby could have been killed. I thought about the city commissioners and all the statements that they had made about me and the Negro generally. I was once more on the verge of corroding anger. And once more I caught myself and said: “You must not allow yourself to become bitter.”
I tried to put…