In his June 28 column "This is not 1963 Alabama," Barry Saunders missed the point of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. The letter was not written during a racist crackdown. Instead, Birmingham had recently repudiated police chief Bull Connor, when he was defeated in the mayoral election, and the white establishment had agreed to initiate a slow and steady integration. The national press had turned against King, wondering why he was demonstrating against a city that was making progress. King could have left the jail at any time, but remained imprisoned to make a point. Connor and King were both portrayed as uncompromising extremists. This is why King wrote his famous letter.
When Revs. William Barber and Nancy Petty were arrested to protest the Wake County school board, they were creating what King referred to as tension. King says of nonviolent direct action: It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. Barber and others are squarely within the tradition of Letter from Birmingham Jail in identifying and denouncing injustice. And it is nothing that a bit of volunteerism, as Saunders and school board member John Tedesco condescendingly suggest, will fix.
Adam Linker,
