The Words That Ring True
Either we go up together, or we go down together
Today is Inauguration Day, and for a full rundown of the plans for that, see this newsletter.
Today is also Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. I was fully prepared to write an article talking about what Martin Luther King means to me. And I still may write that article someday. (Let me know in the comments if that interests you.) But something else rose to the surface.
Every year, I reread important MLK works. Not the highlight quotes, but I do my best to read something substantive, in context. Some years, it’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail, in which King talks about his disappointment, not with the racists who would rather see him dead, but with the white men and women who he didn’t think were doing enough. He wrote:
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. 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"...Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
Some years I read the text of his I Have a Dream speech, where he says,
”Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”
But this year, in 2025, I knew what I needed to read. It was King’s I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech.