we’ve come far, but the work is not yet done

16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas… But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
…
The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
…
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights… Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts 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; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society… when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”… when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

Barack Obama most certainly understands this, but does he see how it applies to the current situation, to Boehner and McConnell and all of the Republicans for whom the only reasonable outcome of any negotiation is complete capitulation to their side? Does he understand that there can be no “bipartisanship” or “post-partisanship” under these circumstances; that when there is a wrong to be redressed, half-measures and compromises only prolong and deepen the wrong? That, like those clergymen Dr. King was addressing, the Villagers who call for conciliation and comity have never felt the deprivations they minimize with their demands?

And finally, does Barack Obama understand that these words of Martin Luther King, Jr. apply equally to gays and lesbians? That they despair at having to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why does Rick Warren treat gay people so mean?”

You have reached the top, Mr. Obama, and tomorrow we will rejoice to call you “Mr. President.” But many more are still fighting their way up that hill towards equality, and a concert on the National Mall – even one as stirring and hopeful as yesterday’s – will not get them any closer to it.

Extend your hand and help them up – and let no one stand in your way.