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

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I thank Senator Brown, and I thank my colleagues. April 16, 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.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against ``outsiders coming in.'' I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ``thus saith the Lord'' far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and 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. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ``outside agitator'' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: ``Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?'' ``Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?'' We decided to schedule our direct action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.

Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that the Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene ``Bull'' Connor, had piled up enough votes to be in the run off, we decided again to postpone action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct action program could be delayed no longer.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, if there was a theme of this colloquy, it is that students and families are bearing the brunt, the consequences of this administration's botched FAFSA rollout. So let me just speak to that more broadly.

First, state of play: May 1 is national college decision day, which should be just like an exciting day for the kids and the families.

In my day, they used to go to the mailbox and pop open the mailbox. There is an envelope. Show it to Mom. Show it to Dad. Whoa, isn't that exciting? But that is not going to happen this time by email or by snail mail.

The issue here is clearly because of the administration's botched rollout. Now, what do I mean by that? First, let's explain what FAFSA is. FAFSA is the information that a prospective student receives as to the amount of financial aid they will receive if they go to this college or that college.

So they open it up, and they say ``Oh, this is how much I get to offset tuition if I go to my local State school'' or ``No, I want to go out of State. How much do I get to go there?'' They can compare those financial offer sheets and make a decision as to what is the best place for them to go financially. But that is not going to happen or if it happens, it is going to happen in a poor way.

So the timeline is, last October is when FAFSA should have been ready, but the system wasn't ready, and we were told it would be ready in January. It was for about 3 or 4 days, and then it was delayed until March. Now we learn that about 30 percent of those FAFSA forms have processing data errors and have to be reprocessed, and they won't be reprocessed until after the May 1 deadline. So instead of opening up that email and learning what your financial package could be, it will be ``You will hear at a later date.''

So what are the consequences? Colleges cannot offer these students their financial package because of the processing errors. Some students will decide not to go to school because they don't know if they can afford it. Some universities will have a cash-flow problem because the students who might have gone there for enrollment will not, and so the cash-flow problem will be very real.

Now, what is doubly frustrating is that the administration has been doing things they shouldn't have been doing instead of doing that which they should have done. Remember, they were supposed to have this ready in October, then in January, and then it goes down again. When it finally comes up in May, we are told that 30 percent of them will be in error, when it was supposed to be ready in October.

What have they been doing in the meantime? They have been working on student loan ``forgiveness,'' which really means student loan transfer of debt from those who willingly took that student debt on-- transferring it to someone who either paid back their loan or never went to college. That is what they have been doing.

By the way, we have this hotline here: Trouble with FAFSA? Go to help.senate.gov/FAFSA. We have had this up, and we have gotten some responses. Let's see. Not receiving clear instructions when able to reach a person, and the total thing was about anger about the long wait times on the phone. This is when they call the Department of Education or FAFSA, trying to get an understanding. Another person: frustration about the continued delays and the lack of communication, and then there are additional delays, which seem to be frequent. Uncertainty due to the lack of communication from the Department, and when there is information, it is not helpful. Parents are expressing concerns and anxiety about choosing the best school for their child due to the compressed decision timeline. For those who have been through the process in the past, they describe this year as ``being significantly worse.''

It is up to Congress--and this colloquy is Republicans, but I invite my Democratic colleagues to come on board and hold the administration accountable. This should not be partisan. It is about the students. It is about the parents. It is about the integrity of a process that the Department of Education is totally failing.

For those watching, if you have an experience with FAFSA that you wish to report, please go there--help.senate.gov/FAFSA.

I invite all my Senate colleagues to join me and the HELP Committee in terms of holding this administration accountable.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source