Coatesville\" John Jay Chapman \"The Letter Birmingham

¶ … Coatesville" John Jay Chapman "The Letter Birmingham Jail" Martin Luther

Deeply Disillusioned

The United States of America has meant a wide variety of things to several different people, particularly to those who have had to call its shores home. The initial promise of this land -- as one of redemption, as a place where the lofty ideas engraved within such documents as the Bill of Rights and the Constitution have never been fully realized by a widening number of people who have never been treated with the degree of parity and ideals within them -- wasted little time in going sour. Virtually any Native American can tell you: there can never be justice on stolen land. In spite of this fact, men such as Martin Luther King, Jr. have written their own documents (such as "Letter From A Birmingham Jail," a discourse about the need for public non-violent protest) attempting to change this fact and change the country. Similarly, John Jay Chapman's piece entitled "Coatesville," which laments the public burning of an African-American man, was also written as a cry to incite decisive action within this country to bring about a perceived change in the racial disparities that have always threatened it. Yet closer examination of these texts indicates the authors' respective sense of disillusionment with America's promise and the idea that there will never be justice within its borders.

The principle cause for the growing sense of disillusionment within the United States is evinced in Chapman's "Coatesville" as a direct result of the racially motivated violent actions propagated against African-Americans. The public burning of an African-American was the inspiration for the author's writing of "Coatesville," and shows his disillusionment with a society that would largely tolerate and condone such action, as the following quotation indicates. "As I read the newspaper accounts of the scene enacted here in Coatesville a year ago, I seemed to get a glimpse into the unconscious soul of this country… I said to myself…I have seen death in the heart of this people." The newspaper accounts which the author refers to in this quotation are the chronicling of the fiery death of the African-American who was burned in public. Chapman's disillusionment is evident by the fact that he refers to this incident as revealing the "soul" of American people, and that that soul, and the heart which encases it, is death. It is due to the racial violence that the author has become so disillusioned with American society that he sees its "death."

Moreover, this same tendency to incite racial violence against African-Americans is the primary cause for King's disillusionment with the United States, and is fairly demonstrative in "Letter From A Birmingham Jail." The following quotation, in which King explains to a group of clergymen in Birmingham why he felt the need to pursue non-violent action that would eventually get him jailed, readily attests to this fact. "Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatments in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case." In understanding how this quotation illustrates King's disillusionment with the United States, it becomes important to understand his reason for writing this document. King was jailed for leading non-violent protests against unfair racial treatment in Birmingham. The recipients of this letter were clergymen who criticized his need to wage such a campaign within the streets of this city. Yet the very fact that King felt the need to take such an overt action as a protest indicates his disillusionment with this country, and its "grossly unjust" dealings with African-Americans within the court system.

The degree of culpability with which these authors regard the surrounding society of the United States that allows such racial violence to take place is another, more poignant source of disillusionment in this country. Chapman, for his part, widely indicts all residents of the country as being guilty for the burning of the African-American man in Pennsylvania a year earlier. The author's disillusionment with such a society can be widely implied from the following quotation. "We are met to commemorate the anniversary of one of the most dreadful crimes in history -- not for the purpose of condemning it, but to repent for our share in it…I understand that an attempt to prosecute the chief criminals has been made, and has entirely failed; because the whole community, and in a sense our whole people, are really involved in the guilt." The degree of guilt which the author feels personally, and which he projects upon his fellow United States residents, is easily evinced from this quotation. It is due to this guilt that the author has written this document, to aid in his personal and communal "repent" for this crime. The fact that Chapman believes the entire social structure of the U.S. is culpable for this particular incidence of violence suggests that the author has become disillusioned with the ideals of the country. This notion is further reinforced by the allusion to the criminal justice system, which "has entirely failed' to render any sense of justice for this travesty. The fact that the justice system failed, and that Chapman believes the entire U.S. community (members of whom gathered about to watch the burning man perish), is accountable for this action, is demonstrative of his growing sense of disillusionment in the U.S.