“Silk-Stocking church”
King writes, “The first few weeks in the autumn of 1954 were spent formulating a program that would be meaningful to this particular congregation. I was anxious to change the impression in the community that Dexter was a sort of silk-stocking church catering only to a certain class. Often it was referred to as the “big folks’ church.” The rhetorical ‘silk-stocking’ renders the church a designated worship place for high ranking folks only where the low class personalities would not be permissible. Although the church is a divine locale that should be used to unite people, it could be a foundation of classism-linked bigotry.
“Unequal Justice”
Martin Luther King Jr observes, “The Reeves case was typical of the unequal justice of Southern courts. In the years that he sat in jail, several white men in Alabama had also been charged with rape; but their accusers were Negro girls. They were seldom arrested; if arrested, they were soon released by the grand jury; none was ever brought to trial. For good reason the Negroes of the South had learned to fear and mistrust the white man’s justice.” Although justice structure is anticipated to foster equivalence of all people, Reeves is treated unfairly because he is a black suspect whereas the litigant is a white woman who claimed that he molested her. The metaphoric uneven justice typifies the encounters that civic rights advocates had to antagonize for the black to be treated equitably.
“Road to Justice”
Martin Luther King elaborates, “Through education we seek to change internal feelings (prejudice, hate, etc.); through legislation and court orders we seek to control the external effects of those feelings. Through education we seek to break down the spiritual barriers to integration; through legislation and court orders we seek to break down the physical barriers to integration. One method is not a substitute for the other, but a meaningful and necessary supplement. Anyone who starts out with the conviction that the road to racial justice is only one lane wide will inevitably create a traffic jam and make the journey infinitely longer.” The metaphoric road ratifies the tactic of expending manifold methodologies to pursue justices; the numerous approaches are comparable to the compound lanes on a highway. Exploiting a single approach in the quest to civil rights for the blacks is guaranteed to delay the course which is epitomized in the figurative ‘traffic jam.’
