“April is the cruelest month,” said T.S. Eliot. The poet’s words were written in blood Monday as two bombs shattered the joy of the Boston Marathon, one of America’s most famous running events. Three people were killed by the twin blasts and more than 170 runners and race spectators were injured in the attacks.
Not all is cruel in this month of April, as was shown by the heroism of Boston’s police, doctors, emergency workers and ordinary citizens of the city on April 15. As messages of support for the people of “Beantown” poured in from around the globe, it was a sweet coincidence that just one day after the tragedy there was a worldwide observance of the words of a champion of nonviolence written half a century ago, on April 16, 1963.
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail” while serving a sentence for defying the segregation laws in that Alabama city. To mark the milestone 50th anniversary of that iconic American document, the Birmingham Public Library sponsored international readings of Dr. King’s letter to his fellow clergymen in the city, in which he castigated them for donning religious vestments while supporting the Birmingham status quo of racial injustice.
“There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation,” Dr. King reminded the ministers, priests and rabbis of that town in his letter. Indeed, civil rights activists gave Birmingham the sarcastic sobriquet of “Bombingham” because of its sordid record of violence perpetrated by white supremacists like the Ku Klux Klan, America’s oldest home-grown terrorist organization. Such terror against African-American citizens was institutionalized in segregationist states like Alabama as white churches, courts press and police colluded to enforce injustice in Birmingham and all across the Jim Crow South.
From Birmingham to Boston, the words of Dr. King resonate in a world still wracked by strife and injustice. It was fitting that after the tragedy of the new Boston Massacre, the words of a “drum major for justice” were read around the world. Here in Athens, the Friends of the Athens-Clarke County Library sponsored a reading of “Letter From Birmingham Jail” that brought applause and discussion from those who attended the Tuesday evening presentation. The local readers of the King letter included Rev. Sherman Crockett, Barbara Crockett, Joseph Smith, JoBeth Allen, Bill Loughner, Edward Brumby, Desylin Winford, Linda Lloyd, Susie Wong, Dr. Neal Priest and Diane Batts Morrow. Martin Luther King would probably have flashed his famous smile if he could have seen a group of blacks, whites and Asians reading his words at a library in Georgia.
“Letter From Birmingham Jail” was written to protest and expose racial segregation while calling on clergymen to support justice for all. Fifty years later, Dr. King’s defiant optimism still has healing powers for America in the words ending his letter, expressing his hope that “in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.”
• Ed Tant has been an Athens columnist since 1974. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Progressive and other publications. For more, see his website, www.edtant.com.