July 13, 2007
By Douglas Carpenter

Editor's note: The following response comes from the Rev. Douglas Carpenter, retired, of Birmingham, Alabama, son of Bishop C. C. J. Carpenter, the first name addressed in the Letter from Birmingham Jail by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Rev. Winnie Varghese has a good article in the May issue of Episcopal Life, but I was bemused by the fact that she spoke of Birmingham, Alabama, as a peaceful city before 1963.

I grew up in Birmingham in the ‘30s and ‘40s. It was not peaceful. It was a very tough steel-producing city, covered with smoke and soot. There were frequent murders.

My father, C. C. J. Carpenter, was the bishop of the Alabama Diocese from 1938, when I had just turned 5, until 1968. In 1951, a parish in Mobile wanted to start a parochial school. He gave his approval only when they agreed it could be integrated. Actions such as this put him on the hit list of the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan. He got frequent hate threats by phone.

After the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, racial events began to heat up in Birmingham, and he was quite aware of white people in Birmingham and other parts of the state who were capable of murder.

I remember how happy he was when a local law was passed forbidding people to wear masks in public. He thought this would really set the Klan back. He thought of them as cowards who were afraid to show their faces. Another local law was passed forbidding public marches without a permit. This was to stop the Klan and the White Citizens Council. This was long before the civil rights marches.

At my first Diocesan Convention in Alabama after ordination, 1961, I was amazed at the anger of some of the white delegates. At times it looked as though they wanted to physically abuse my "liberal" father. At one time there was much shouting about the National Council of Churches being Communist.

My father, a supporter of the National Council of Churches, appointed the angriest to a committee to go study the NCC. He told them that if they proved it was overrun with Communists, he would help them take the case to the FBI. Some of them did actually do their homework, but could produce no evidence.

Birmingham a peaceful city! If this sort of anger and shouting was going on in the Episcopal Church, what greater violence could go on in the streets.

After graduating from college in 1955, I never lived in Birmingham again until 1974. At that time, Rabbi Milton Grafman was the only one addressed in the Letter from Birmingham Jail who was still active in Birmingham. I went to talk with him about the ‘60s. His first comment was, "I truly think Birmingham might have been burned to the ground if it hadn't been for your father." Of course that was an exaggeration, but it was another indication that Birmingham was by no stretch of the imagination a "peaceful city" before 1963.

Black and white leaders often met in my father's office in the early ‘60s. At one meeting, my father said to the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, clearly the most effective leader among the black community, "Fred, what you want to accomplish could take 50 years." I still think it was an inappropriate statement at the time, but unfortunately it was true.

I saw Dr. Shuttlesworth at a political gathering in Birmingham a few years ago. He said to me, "Oh, yes, I knew your father well. We disagreed on a few things." Then, in a very moving way, he said, "But we loved each other."

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Douglas Carpenter, retired, was rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Birmingham, Ala. To respond to this column, e-mail letters@episcopal-life.org.