PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — One of the many events around the city this weekend recognizing the civil rights contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a musical exploration of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” performed at the Museum of the American Revolution.
“‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ is a rant in response to a really depressing circumstance that King was going through,” said spoken word artist, poet and vocalist Warren Christopher Longmire.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written after King was arrested following a particularly contentious protest that took place in April 1963.
“At that point Jim Crow laws were still very strong,” Longmire described, “so restrictions on health care access and education access and where you could eat and where you could shop.”
In telling King’s story, Longmire said the Philadelphia Jazz Project pulled excerpts of that letter for their performance, called “Wait Means Never.”
The letter outlined several important issues regarding protesters and civil rights, says Adrienne Whaley, the museum’s director of education and community engagement.
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“Frankly, the letter is the size of a small book,” she said, explaining that King said people with power don’t want to give it up, so they tell you to hold off on your protests, to wait.
“Them telling you to wait is actually just their way of holding you off forever,” said Whaley. “When your first name becomes the N-word, when your middle name becomes ‘boy,’ that's when you learned that wait means never.”
Longmire pointed out that the fight for equal education, health care and even which water fountain to use wasn’t that long ago.
“It's 59 years ago this year that the Birmingham campaign happened, which is inside of my mother's lifetime,” he said.
One of his key takeaways from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was in how King laid out what it takes to be a nonviolent protester.
“One thing that really struck me inside of the letter was they have to go through a process of self-purification, where they decide that they're ready to be arrested and beaten inside of themselves. And that's a step before you go out into the streets,” he shared. “There’s real pain in being an activist.”