King raised the question he thought should have occurred to the white preachers. “But for what purpose?” he asked them, and he answered his own question: “To preserve the evil system of segregation.” For all his nonviolent preaching about how it was wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends, King wrote, “it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.” He quoted T. S. Eliot to that effect. Then he returned soulfully to his lament. “I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness
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