If I had read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in April of 1963, I would probably have agreed with the eight clergy he was addressing. Two of them were Episcopal bishops from Alabama: the Rt. Rev. C. C. J. Carpenter and the Rt. Rev. George Murray. The eight clergy counseled Dr. King and movement leaders to go slow, to make their case in the courts, to rely on the eventual good will of white Birmingham--at all costs to avoid stirring up the black community, which, they feared, could become violent.
At that time, I had not yet had my turn-around experience on racial matters, which for me occurred during the summer of 1966. I was an Episcopal seminary student that summer assigned to work in a black Episcopal mission in my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. It was only after I experienced the terrible poverty, similar to that of failed African countries, that I knew beyond doubt that "necessary segregation, God's will" -- what I had heard all of my growing-up years -- was the demon in the culture that had raised me with so much love.
More here-
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2013/04/martin_luther_kings_advocacy_a.html
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