Reading a Love Letter to Justice

Was it divine intervention or simply the fact of being right that makes the infamous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” timeless, profound and even life-changing for some readers? If you haven’t met Dwayne Betts in an earlier EconTalk episode, get ready for Russ Roberts’s phenomenal friend and guest. Betts is so present in the moment and affected by the beauty, truth, and humility of the great Martin Luther King that his voice sometimes cracks answering Roberts’s questions. In this episode, he shares moments from his own history and the effect King’s work has had on him.

Betts’s 9 years in prison and remarkable journey since uniquely qualify him as the King family’s choice author for the introduction to Letter from Birmingham Jail (The Essential Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King). We hope this conversation stirs thoughts about freedom in you. Please share a thought or insight in the comments below.

 

 

1- Both Roberts and Betts have appreciated King’s great speech in different ways upon revisiting it. Roberts calls it a love letter to justice in his (King’s) country. As you pause and read “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King Jr., what do you notice that perhaps you didn’t remember?

 

2- How does Betts argue that King’s urgent letter, a response to criticism of his nonviolent protesting, honored the eight clergy critics? 

 

3- Betts states, “I feel like it’s much more challenging to name what the side of justice looks like,” referring to the difficulty of arguing with conviction on contemporary topics. To what extent do you agree with this statement and, with what examples would you explain?

 

4- “Turning regrets into feathers” versus “Economics explains everything except justice”.  John Rawls (not Robert Nozick) is in The Freedom Library in 340 prisons. Confronting the sense of “nobodiness,” which conversation strand would you want to pursue over dinner, and why?

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