February in America is National Black History Month. This month is a needed time for reflection of past pain and a celebration of present hope. As a white kid who spent most of his childhood in the state of Colorado, I've been admittedly ignorant of the horrible history of race relations in this country. Recently, my best friend asked me to read Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," and it honestly blew my mind. If you've yet to read King's manifesto from within the Birmingham jail, I challenge you to do so. Here are four of many truths that struck me as worth sharing while reading the letter.

1. Not every protest is bad

Between the Black Lives Matter protesters, the Anarchy flag wielding protesters of the recent inauguration, the Women's March, and the March for Life, the topic of protest has been on the news a lot lately. Some, unfortunately, forget about the first amendment all together and blanket all protest as bad. Others only think protest is bad if the protesters don't agree with them. But, in King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail," it becomes apparent that his non-violent protest for which he was arrested was not bad even though the clergymen to whom he wrote viewed the rise-up as "untimely."

King defends his nonviolent actions,

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

King's point is an important one. So often, individuals are willing to criticize acts of protest without recognizing the truly protest-worthy cause of the unrest. Prayerfully, I hope that before we criticize those who protest we will at least give an ear to why they are protesting.

2. Not every law is good

Likewise, King defended the act of breaking laws that were intrinsically unjust (i.e. King sitting at a lunch counter labeled "Whites Only"):

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." ... Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority

We ought not to think that every law is intrinsically just simply because it is a law. Now, I am not calling for any level of anarchy-driven overthrow of order, but when laws are made to unjustly suppress people based on the color of their skin, they are no longer moral.

3. Silence isn't always golden

There were many whites who believed to be on the right side of history because they didn't advocate segregation or use degrading speech towards blacks, etc. But, Mr. King points out that to be on the right side of history requires more than silence:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
...

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Let those of us who stand against injustice do so loudly.

4. Segregation is evil

There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. Admittedly, I don't often think about segregation seeing that I've never experienced it firsthand, though I have seen some of its fruits. But, of all the truths in King's letter, this one struck me the most. King's description of the effects of segregation will bring tears to your eyes:

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 midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

I hope we can remember these truths, not only in February, but in every month. We have come a long way since the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., and there are still many areas in which we must improve. Let's hold fast to these truths and, as King called for, be "extremists for love."