The
emotion conveyed in Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail seeps from his exquisite language, so
rich in its power to move one’s heart and challenge the crushing grip of
injustice. King’s impassioned lines transport
one back into the culture and atmosphere of the segregated South, and into the
position of those suffering from injustice. Even in the midst of such hatred, King manages
to adopt a tone of community and brotherhood, writing, “We are caught in the
inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one directly, affects the other indirectly…Anyone who lives within the
United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds”(King).
On several occasions throughout the text King’s
writing addresses, although not explicitly, the issue of one’s homeland. In describing the plight of his fellow Negro,
he writes that the Black man is “forever fighting a degenerating sense of
nobodiness”(King). This “nobodiness” is
the black man’s lack of home and the lack of acceptance and justice in what is
rightfully his homeland. Later in the letter,
he writes this emotion as one “drained…of a sense of somebodiness” (King). He intimately connects home with a sense of
being—a recognition of one’s self and life in a community. One’s ability to “be” is stifled by the choking clutches of racism, segregation, lack of personal freedoms and overall injustice.
King’s Letter offers us a situation which demands immediate action and elicits
the desire to fight for justice. Through
the beauty and passion of his words we come to recognize similar instances of
injustice in our world today and are forced to question our dedication to
fighting such injustices. His words
speak to us even now, and strike us with their truth and haunting relevance to
our own time.
Enter Peter Hans-Kolvenbach’s study The Service of Faith and the Promotion of
Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education. The mission of Jesuit ideals
is to answer the call that King poses in his letter. The vital role of “men and women for others” demands
what Kolvenbach describes as “well educated solidarity," a common fellowship
which allows us to see through the eyes of our brother and act with the spiritual
knowledge and strength that form the foundations of the Jesuit mission. These two texts seem to communicate with each
other, providing us with a reminder of the injustice at hand and a plan of
action to combat its spread and, through awareness, contact and solidarity,
increase the army of those willing to fight.
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