in jail but perhaps before he had read the eight clergymen's letter, blacks testing their welcome in white churches across Birmingham were denied entry at most of them. At Stallings's First Baptist Church, however, Andrew Young and four black women entered the church, where they sang "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today." Although Young's offering for the collection basket was rejected and dozens of worshippers walked out of the church, Reverend Stallings greeted Young warmly after the service.

King also stresses that he is not a naysayer who reflexively chides the church. He is "a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom." If he has "wept over the laxity of the church," he has done so only "in deep disappointment" because hetoo long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the