I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963

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When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was sitting in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, he penned his response to a letter from some clergymen who objected to his demands.  He had led a peaceful march for freedom, but some objected, including some local church leaders.  Those clergymen wrote, in part:

We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.

Dr. King wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to their call to be “patient.”  It is, in my opinion, must reading for any American who cares about our long quest for freedom for all people.  Here are some key excerpts from Dr. King’s response:

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms…
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.

If we should have learned anything about the centuries long quest for freedom, it should be this:  people (peoples) who don’t have freedom are seldom given it freely.  They have to take it.  Our very Declaration of Independence reminds us of this:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Whatever else we celebrate today, we celebrate this:  that people longing to be free have risen up, time and again, and asked for what is their “constitutional and God given rights.”  And any attempt to withhold such rights, such freedom, such freedoms, from any people (peoples) is downright un-American.

Enjoy your freedom.  Remember the long struggles that got us here.  And ask, who is deprived of this freedom today?  And, what can we do to speed up the process for them?  For, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

Happy 4^th of July.

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An interesting note:  this is a rare photograph of Dr. King dressed not in a suit and tie.  Taylor Branch chronicled Dr. King’s decision to go to jail, and described the shocked look on the faces of his friends as he stepped out of his bedroom in “dungarees and a work shirt.”  Ir’s been years since I read this, but I’m pretty sure it was in Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch.  As his friends debated the wisdom of Dr. King himself participating in the demonstration and thus being arrested, Dr. King stepped out in attire that signaled “I’m ready to go to jail.”  The adds to the poignancy of this line from his “I Have A Dream “ speech, delivered some four months after this arrest:

“With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”