Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, today is the second time in the last 2 years that I have had the opportunity to join the Senator from Alabama, coming together with a bipartisan group of Senators to read Dr. King's letter from the Birmingham jail.

I want to thank the Senator from Alabama for his leadership and bringing this group together. I have read that letter many times before, but I had never read it out loud. I had never heard the words spoken, much less heard them spoken in this historic Chamber.

I think today is a time when every American should listen to those words. Today is a time that every American should look back at the incredible call to justice that Dr. King gave us.

This is a time where our Nation is grieving. This is a time where there is anger, division, rage. This is a time where our country is divided on racial lines in a way it hasn't been in a long, long time. This is a time where we need to hear a call to unity--a call to unity and a call to justice. Dr. King's call was powerful for both, for unity and for justice.

I would like to just briefly make three observations about this historic letter. The first is that this was a letter from a pastor written to pastors. We refer to Dr. King as ``Dr. King,'' and it is easy to forget that he was also Reverend King. He was a Christian minister who preached the Gospel.

The very first words of this letter are ``My Dear Fellow Clergymen.'' That is to whom this was addressed, the leaders in the church, where he had a message of get off your rear ends and stand for justice.

If you are a person of faith, then, justice, defeating racial discrimination, defeating bigotry is not just a matter of truth, but it is a matter of morality.

Here is what Dr. King said about it in the opening paragraphs of the letter: ``I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.''

Understand how much this was a call to church leaders. He says: ``Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried''. . . . their message. . . . ``just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.''

At a time when our Nation is grieving, is in anguish, is in anger, is in division, Dr. King's--Reverend King's--message to church leaders to stand up for justice, to stand up for truth resonates clear as a bell today.

As a second observation, Dr. King, in this letter and throughout his ministry, throughout his public leadership, called over and over and over to resist violence. Against the voices of those who agreed with him about the injustices, he was calling out where he said violence is not the way.

As we have seen rioting in our cities, as we have seen small businesses burned to the ground, as we have seen police officers assaulted and wounded and murdered in violent and angry protests and riots and looting, the words of Dr. King calling out to resist violence and to speak for justice--those words--should be heard by all of us.

A third observation, in calling for justice, Dr. King appealed to our founding principles. There are some, particularly young people, today, who are angry, who are being peddled, I think, what is a bill of goods--a lie--that America is fundamentally unjust, that it is an evil society built upon racism.

That is simply not true. Is there evil in the world? Yes. Is there racism in the world? Yes. Is there oppression in the world? Yes. Is all of that present in the United States? Absolutely.

But Dr. King, in this letter, didn't endeavor to tear down the foundations of our Nation. Instead, he made an explicit appeal that the promises this Nation was founded upon--the promises of freedom, the promises of equality--we have not yet fully achieved that, but we can.

That is the beauty of this American experiment. We are a nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal, even though our history has been troubled in achieving that objective.

So I thank my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, who came today to reread this letter. We need to hear these words. We need to hear this message. We need to stand for justice and stand for unity.

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