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Crisis in the American Republic: The Legal and Political Significance of Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

Douglas Sturm
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Extract

In November 1963, John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President of the United States of America, was assassinated while travelling in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas.

The election of Kennedy was a significant moment in relations between religion and public life in this nation for, although Catholics were physically present on the continent over a century before Protestant's, the Protestant spirit clearly dominated the newly formed nation in positions of political and economic power well into the twentieth century.

But the death of Kennedy was also a significant moment, a moment in which religious sentiments and public concerns were fused. The grief that was felt nationwide betrayed depths of religious emotion usually reserved for the intimate spaces of family life. But this was the grief of a body politic for one in whose office the entire community, however otherwise divided, was symbolized. Moreover, the funeral, stately and elegant, came as close as any other event in the history of America to being a national religious ritual, even if conducted for many only through the conveyance of electronic media.

Type
Special Section—Religion and American Public Life
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , 1984 , pp. 309 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1984

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Footnotes

*

This article was originally an address to the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago Divinity School, presented November 2, 1983, on behalf of the Project on Religion and Public Life in America. Except where indicated, the quotations in this article retain the language of the original texts (including terms which would now be construed as sexist—he, his, man—and possibly racist—Negro).

References

1. Bennett, L. Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. 166 (1965)Google Scholar. See also Oates, S. B., Let the Trumpet Sound: the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. 271-272, 529 (1982)Google Scholar.

2. King, Jr., Letter From a Birmingham Jail, in Why We Can't Watt 79–81 (1964)Google Scholar.

3. 347 U.S. 483 (1954), 349 U.S. 294 (1955).

4. King, M. L. Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)Google Scholar. See also On the Stage of History, in Oates, supra note 1, at 55-112.

5. Bennett, Jr. supra note 1, at 132-134.

6. Myrdal, G., An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944)Google Scholar.

7. See What is a Dilemma?, Aptheker, H., The Negro People in America, A Critique of Myrdal's “An American Dilemma” (1946)Google Scholar.

8. Noonan, J. T. Jr., Persons and Masks of the Law: Cardozo, Holmes, Jefferson, and Wythe as Makers of the Masks 29–64 (1976)Google Scholar.

9. Miller, A. S., The Supreme Court and American Capitalism (1968)Google Scholar.

10. Bennet, Jr., supra note 1, at 132-134.

11. King, Jr., supra note 2, at 79-81.

12. Bennett, Jr., supra note 1, at 132-134.

13. King, JR., supra note 2, at 82-84.

14. Ellison, , An American Dilemma: A Review in Shadow and Act 316–317 (1964)Google Scholar. The review was written originally in 1944.

15. McWilliams, W. C., The Idea of Fraternity in America 617 (1973)Google Scholar.

16. Sullivan, W.M., Reconstructing Public Philosophy 160 (1982)Google Scholar.

17. King, Jr., supra note 2.

18. Smith, K. L. & Zepp, I. G. Jr., Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. 110–113 (1974)Google Scholar.

19. Maciver, R. M., The Web of Government 47–61 (1965)Google Scholar.

20. King, Jr., supra note 2, at 162.

21. Smith & Zepp, Jr., supra note 18, at 119.

22. Harrington, M., The Other America, Poverty in the United States (1962)Google Scholar. See also Harrington, M., The New American Poverty (1984)Google Scholar.

23. See McWilliams, supra note 15, at 622-624.

24. King, M. L. Jr., Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community? 167, 190 (1967)Google Scholar.

25. King, Jr., supra note 2, at 77.

26. King, Jr., The Days to Come, in Why We Can't Wait, supra note 2, at 151-152.