<P> King addressed the accusation that the Civil Rights Movement was "extreme", first disputing the label but then accepting it . Compared to other movements at the time, King finds himself as a moderate . However, in his devotion to his cause, King refers to himself as an extremist . Jesus and other great reformers were extremists: "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be . Will we be extremists for hate or for love?" King's discussion of extremism implicitly responded to numerous "moderate" objections to the ongoing movement, such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's claim that he could not meet with civil rights leaders because doing so would require him to meet with the Ku Klux Klan . </P> <P> King expressed general frustration with both white moderates and certain "opposing forces in the Negro community ." He wrote that white moderates, including clergymen, posed a challenge comparable to that of white supremacists, in the sense that, "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 ." King asserted that the white church needed to take a principled stand or risk being "dismissed as an irrelevant social club ." Regarding the black community, King wrote that we need not follow "the' do - nothingism' of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist ." </P> <P> In closing the letter, King criticized the clergy's praise of the Birmingham police for maintaining order nonviolently . Recent public displays of nonviolence by the police were in stark contrast to their typical treatment of black people, and, as public relations, helped "to preserve the evil system of segregation ." Not only is it wrong to use immoral means to achieve moral ends, but also "to use moral means to preserve immoral ends ." Instead of the police, King praised the nonviolent demonstrators in Birmingham, "for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation . One day the South will recognize its real heroes ." </P> <P> King wrote the letter on the margins of a newspaper, which was the only paper available to him, and then gave bits and pieces of the letter to his lawyers to take back to movement headquarters, where the pastor Wyatt Tee Walker and his secretary Willie Pearl Mackey began compiling and editing the literary jigsaw puzzle . </P>

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