Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the Letter from Birmingham Jail

by S. Jonathan Bass

Book Overview

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail is arguably the most important written document of the civil rights protest era and a widely read modern literary classic. Personally addressed to eight white Birmingham clergymen who sought to avoid violence by publicly discouraging King's civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, the nationally published Letter captured the essence of the struggle for racial equality and provided a blistering...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807128007
• ISBN13: 9780807128008
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Birmingham

This story of the 8 pastors who rec'd Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" is not only accurate and complete, but is written with sensitivity, skill and passion. The events of those days give Birmingham fair claim to being the City that Changed the World. But it did not come easy. An important book, and an engaging read.

One MLK Jr. Holiday, I See More Need for Peacemakers!

All who lived during those momentous years of Southern turmoil of 1960's were greatly impacted by the laws of desegregation of the white churches and schools. As one renews his/her commitment to religious and social justice, it brings into focus our recent tragedies of Ruwanda, Iraq, Thailand, and Indonesia! Upon my own return to Professor Bass's BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, I easily conjure up my perennial pictures of his accounts of eight white Ministers, their churches and families being turned inside/out or upside/down by Southern racial injustice. In Bass's easy reading, documented, and dramatically illustrated account of eight white ministers' appeal for law, order, common sense, before and after the reception of MLK Jr's, "Letter From Birmingham Jail," I was transported back to 1963; Into mid-1965 when Earl Stallings became both my Pastor and my Good Friend! In spite of persistent segregationist pressure, not once did Earl consider turning black vsitors away from First Baptist Church of Birmingham. "If the people came to worship," Stallings wrote days after the incident "we had no Christian justification for closing our doors...if they came to provoke an incident, we were determined to have no part in this action." Since 1954 the FBC maintained an open-door policy for any black visitors. From an early distinguished Pastor J T Ford, followed by Guy Sloan and Grady Cothen and Earl Stallings they reaffirmed that policy! Yet on the morning after they welcomed the first black visitors, newspapers all over the country printed large photographs of a cheerful Earl Stallings shaking hands with the black visitors. They included both the NEW YORK TIMES and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution! From my perspective or from Prof. Jonathan Bass's perpspective, it appears that he gave a deeper account of the introspective thoughts or words of Earl Stallings, than from the other white ministers! Since MLK's Letter referred to outstanding persons' writing: Ralph McGill, Harry Golden, James McBride Dobbs, Ann Braden, Lillian Smith, and Sarah Patten Boyle, it seems that the author added deserving comments beside the eight pictures of those Ministers. Next to Earl Stallings picture he quoted his recent sermon: "We hear the call of truth, of righteousness, of justice, but we are not men enough to heed its challenge!" From 1965 thru 1975 in his next pastorate, I often needed Earl's commitment to equality and social justice, as when I chose music of Fred Waring's "Easter Story of Black Spirituals" over Church dissent: "It's getting much too close for those Black threats of violence in our streets of Marietta on Good Friday, April 8th of 1968!" That same evening for the Good Friday Worship we had a full house with a few black families present! Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood

A Special Delivery Letter

It was just a letter written by a man in jail, on behalf of his race, attempting to address the social injustice of the time-right? Wrong! Martin Luther King's Letter From the Birmingham Jail is much more compelling, and the circumstances surrounding its final composition more complex than the average person knows. Ostensibly written to the eight white clergymen of the embittered and embattled steel city, it was intended for a much wider audience-namely the media and the American public. Blessed Are the Peacemakers provides the reader with individual profiles of the eight and their struggles of conscience as they saw an old social order collapse. What has been taken as the almost spur-of-the-moment reflections of Martin Luther King, in jail for civil disobedience, turns out to be a document much longer in the making and more calculated in its delivery. This disclosure in no way detracts from its rightful place in American folklore or its power in fueling Civil Rights Movement. Rather, it helps us understand the care with which the deep conviction of racial rights was presented. The book is not an apology for the eight clergy, some of whom were more progressive than others, but it does provide much needed insight for the serious student of history into the complex struggles, powerful emotions, and vitrolic attacks perpetrated on even the most moderate voices of the white clergy. What it does not do, of course, is speak of the many white clergy of lesser rank who paid a much higher price for their fight for justice for their black brothers and sisters. Still, to read about these eight leaders, (Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Jewish) and their struggles is instructive. As an Alabama-born, white clergy expatriate from that period, marginally involved in the Civil Rights Movement, I hung on every word. These are reflections that should help black and white readers alike better understand this turbulent period. Statements from the eight white clergy as well as King's Letter are included in the appendix.