Religion
Related: About this forumReligious leaders mark 50th anniversary of famed King letter from jail
Apr-15-2013
By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Fifty years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took a group of white Alabama clergymen to task for suggesting he find ways, other than demonstrations and protests, to seek racial equality.
The civil rights leader did not mince words telling the group that included Protestant pastors, a rabbi and a Catholic bishop -- Auxiliary Bishop Joseph A. Durick of what was then the Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham, Ala. -- that he was "disappointed with the church."
In their public letter to Rev. King, published in an April 13, 1963, newspaper, the religious leaders urged him to negotiate and wait for court actions and described the civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham as "unwise and untimely."
Rev. King, held in solitary confinement for eight days for violating the city's ban on civil rights demonstrations, began his response to the clergymen April 16, the fourth day of his prison sentence. He used a pencil to write on margins of a newspaper and slips of paper, and he only wrote during the day since his cell had no overhead light.
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