On the recordApril 9, 2019
I rise today to honor a great American, an American whose words lit a flame of hope in the hearts of those souls who had become weary with the weight of injustice, an American whose struggles, ideals--and, yes, his dreams--are etched in the foundation of our Nation. On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested in my hometown of Birmingham, AL. His crime? Leading a peaceful march to protest the indignity suffered by the Black community in the Jim Crow era. He had violated Birmingham public safety commissioner ``Bull'' Connor's ban on public demonstrations, which targeted the growing resistance of African Americans to the injustices they were suffering. While in solitary confinement in Birmingham, Dr. King wrote what became known as the ``Letter from Birmingham Jail''--a stinging response to a group of White clergy in Alabama who had denounced his tactics and questioned the wisdom and timing of his arrival in Birmingham. They insisted that he was an outside agitator coming to Alabama to instigate trouble. Dr. King responded famously: ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' In his letter, he rejected the idea that African Americans should be more patient for change in the face of the daily indignities inflicted by segregation and in the face of violence and threats and intimidation.…
