In the year nineteen hundred and sixty-three, eight white clergymen in Birmingham, Alabama got together and wrote a letter to Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. The eight clergymen titled the letter “A Call for Unity.” The eight white clergymen were from all religious sects in the city of …

You are quite right to call out these clergymen. They certainly were not on the side of the Black residents of Birmingham. They were very clearly on the side of the establishment. The tension that King wants, says we need, is what they fear. They feared the inevitable confrontation. They would say, “Shhh…don’t rock the boat!” King says they are worse than klansmen. Ultimately, the civil rights act passed through a legal, political process. Did the marches and protests make this happen, or would it have happened anyway as the clergymen said?