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Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, it is my honor to--this is something I get to do once a year now--it is my honor to join Senator Rounds of South Dakota and Senator Hirono from Hawaii, and then Senator Collins later, Senator Baldwin, Senator Romney, and Senator Warnock, to join my colleagues of both parties on the floor to read one of the greatest pieces of writing of the 20th century, Dr. King's letter from the Birmingham jail.

I thank those Senators for joining us. Our former colleague, Senator Doug Jones, began this tradition. He did it in 2019 and 2020. As he left the Senate in late 2020, he asked me to continue the tradition that he began. He would have been here on the floor with us to watch and to listen, but he was called to the White House on his work with Judge Jackson.

This is a bipartisan reading. I very purposely chose three Republican friends--Senator Rounds will go first--and three Democrat friends, followed by Senator Hirono. And let me just lay out where we are and what we are doing.

It is April 1963. Dr. King was held in the Birmingham Jail for the supposed crime of leading a series of peaceful protests and boycotts in the city of Birmingham, AL. The goal was to put pressure on the business community to end discrimination in their hiring for local jobs. Some White ministers from Alabama would take issue with these boycotts. They said: Slow down, Dr. King. Don't move too fast. We are for voting rights, too. We are for ending discrimination, but don't demand too much all at once.

Dr. King rejected that premise. That is what this letter is about. It is about demanding justice now for people in Alabama whose skin was Black and who simply could not vote because of the color of their skin.

We can't wait around and hope that problems in families' lives will solve themselves. It is up to us as citizens, as leaders, as members of our churches in our communities.

Dr. King made this point more eloquently and persuasively, certainly, than I can. We will begin the reading of the letter with Senator Rounds from South Dakota.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ``order'' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ``I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action''; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ``more convenient season.'' Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: ``All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.'' Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect in the sense of ``somebodiness'' that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible ``devil.''

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the ``do nothingism'' of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as ``rabble rousers'' and ``outside agitators'' those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, thanks to my colleagues, Senator Warnock, Senator Baldwin in the Presiding Officer's Chair, Senator Rounds, Senator Hirono, Senator Collins, and Senator Romney for joining me to read these powerful words today.

This tradition began in 2019 when Senator Doug Jones from Alabama, a leader in the civil rights movement, as Senator Warnock who just spoke also is--he began this tradition in 2019. And then when he left the Senate in 2020, he asked me to continue and together read these powerful words--a diverse group on the floor today. We come from different backgrounds. We disagree on a number of things. We love this country. We know we can do better for the people who make it work.

In my meeting yesterday with Judge Jackson--soon to be Justice Jackson--we talked about the deep connection between civil rights and workers' rights. Dr. King spoke to labor audiences throughout his life. He preached with a unique eloquence about the inherent dignity of work. He said that ``so often we overlook the work and significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs . . . Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity,'' Dr. King said, ``it has dignity and it has worth.'' He said that ``no labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages.''

I think about the campaign Dr. King waged when he was assassinated. We will never forget that he was martyred in Memphis while fighting for some of the most exploited workers in the country: sanitation workers in segregated Memphis.

We know too many workers face a similar exploitation today. We have seen, over the past 2 years, how many workers corporations call essential but treat as expendable. It is their whole business model.

It is not a coincidence that many of those workers look like the ones for whom Dr. King was fighting for, that they are not the ones in the so-called--his words--``big jobs.''

When on occasion, a company tries to do the right thing when they announce a pay raise or investment in workers, often Wall Street punishes them.

This week, Starbucks--a corporation currently fighting its own workers trying to organize a union--announced they are throwing a bone to workers. The company is going to do a little tiny bit less in executive compensation in the form of stock buybacks this year and do some investment in the workers instead, and their stock price went down. The Wall Street business model doesn't just do nothing for workers--pardon the grammar--it actively discourages investment in workers.

It has to change. Until hard work pays off for all workers, Dr. King's work remains unfinished. That means paying all workers a living wage. Senator Warnock is still on the floor, and Senator Baldwin, the Presiding Officer, are two of the people that fight the hardest for that.

All workers must make a living wage, have more power over their schedule, provide good benefits and safety on the job, and not fight organizing a union. That means all workers get a fair share of the wealth that they create. It means recognizing the dignity of the communities that Black Americans have built over generations. That is how we bring ourselves closer to the society that Dr. King envisioned where all labor has dignity.

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