Dr. King on why we can no longer wait

These are Dr. King's words, a small excerpt from his letter from Birmingham Jail to white clergy on why the "Negro" can no longer "wait"...

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. The nations of Asia

and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at

horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. 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 suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you

seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has

just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is

closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental

sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward

white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a fi ve year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why

do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary

to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept

you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when

your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your

last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; 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. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no

longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and

unavoidable impatience.