Negotiation Of Injustice In Birmingham

I understand that life isn't easy for you and your fellow African Americans. I appreciate that you are trying to settle this in a non-violent way; however, all you are doing is disturbing our way of life. We have lived this way for a number of years and we see no reason to change this way of living. The southern life for the black people should remain the way it is. To begin, we would like to ask you why you are really in Birmingham. In your letter, you stated, “injustice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere.” We don't understand what you mean by this statement. What happens here in Birmingham is very different than what happens in the world. We understand that slavery is everywhere but protesting here in Birmingham is not going to help the situation else where. Birmingham is a small portion of your problem and we would like it if you would instead protest in your own cities instead of disrupting life in ours. You have pointed out several white men that have treated you unfairly during your lifetime. We would like to point out that only a select few white people feel that way about African Americans.
There are many of us that feel empathetical for you and your negro brothers. In the north you are free of slavery and have more rights. Back to the point that only a select few white people have hard feelings for African Americans. Our new mayor, Albert Boutwell, may or may not support African Americans rights; however, you gave him no time to act. You chose to begin protesting immediately after the election of a new mayer. What we are saying is that you chose a very inappropriate and unprofessional time to protest. Boutwell may have made your situation better but you did not give him time to act. You immediately started protesting and disrupting life as we know it. Since we came to America life has been this way. This way of life is tradition. There is no reason to change. One of your arguments is that you have waited long enough to have equal rights. You used this argument to defend yourself when we said you simply started protesting at the wrong time. Please look back into our history to see that we waited a long time to become free as well. We were under British rule for a very long time ourselves. I understand that your letter is pointing out mistreatments and grievances of African Americans in a similar way that our United States Constitution did. Although the Constitution helped us to become free, we don't believe your letter will help blacks become free. A large amount of our economy comes from the work you do in the fields. Blacks are doing their duties to America by working in the field. Why would you want to hurt the overall well being of America? You state that the police of Birmingham, and all over the world, are treating you nonviolently, however you still complain. They are treating you morally and not causing you any harm. You say they are treating you “nonviolently” to preserve the evil system of segregation. We think segregation has done wonders for our community. It separates blacks from whites as we all were born to do different things. Blacks to work in the fields and whites to have a life and go into town. While reading your letter we have noticed that you claim to be for the church. You continuously use examples from the Bible to plead your case. However, you also call the church a failure and state that the church is against you. You claim to want to be a clergy man and a priest after the segregation is over. We want you to remember that when you are publishing letters that claim that the church is a failure it is going to be very hard to reach your goal. We would like to talk about your four step plan a little bit. You state that in every
“nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action”.
We believe that you may have collected facts but that they are influenced by your feelings. You have pointed out that you have tried to negotiate with many people of authority and that nothing went your way. Maybe this is for a reason. Self purification, as we understand, is basically coming to terms with the situation. If you have come to terms with the situation, then why continue to try to change it? As we stated before, we appreciate that you are trying to solve this without using violent protest but your form of “direct action” is just disrupting the way we live. It is affecting life as Americans know it and that is a problem. We don't believe your four-step plan will help you this
time. We agree with you when you say that America’s goal is freedom. We left British rule for freedom. In these four words you tell us what you want and you have most definitely told us why. Although we don't believe you deserve full freedom, we will give you some civil rights. We will create schools for your children to attend and churches for your families to attend. We will build public bathrooms for blacks to use. In conclusion, we believe that life for whites and blacks should stay the way it is. Life has went on this way for a number of years without an problems and we believe it can continue to do so. Once again we would like to say that we appreciate the way you have went about getting yourself freed from segregation however we believe segregation is needed in order to keep our society going smoothly as it has in the past. Blacks have their place in America and whites have theirs, and thats how it should be. Life for African Americans should remain the same as it has since we came to America.