Before writing his letter, he had said that one of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition is to vote. Students in a K-8 school can’t vote, but before they are old enough, they need to learn about the pressing issues of the day, understand the facts behind them and express well-reasoned opinions. The antecedents for informed participation in democracy need to be established from an early age.

In April 1963, Dr. King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and the boycott. The Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a defense of the Civil Rights Movement’s non-violent program. It’s the most profound and eloquent definition of what is required of each American citizen for democracy to flourish. The arguments Dr. King made in 1963 resonate loudly in 2023, and I paused to read them again yesterday.

In response to questions about why he had come to Birmingham and criticism that he was an outside agitator, he wrote the classic lines: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere….whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” He described Birmingham at the time as the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States with an ugly record of police brutality and more unsolved bombings of Black homes and churches than any other city in the country. Negotiations to remove humiliating racial signs from stores led to empty promises. Nothing changed. That led to a peaceful protest and to Dr. King’s arrest.

The letter takes aim at white moderates for sitting on the sidelines and for being more devoted to order than to justice. Out of concern that protests would precipitate violence, they believed Dr. King needed to wait. He responded, “Isn’t that like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?”

He accepts the white clergymen’s description of him as an extremist, “Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? ‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremists we will be…..Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”

As part of Chandler’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, we need to help students understand what justice looks like in age-appropriate ways and guide them to understand lessons learned from history that will result in them becoming engaged, voting citizens to serve Dr. King’s legacy.