Sublime

Martin Luther King Jr. used the power of forgiveness, as developed in the Judeo-Christian tradition, to inspire those in the civil rights movement to act in elevated ways that would win hearts and minds: We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good

the papers of the Southern Conference Education Fund, is my mother talking in 1974 about the indigenous prison struggle, meaning Black Southerners recognizing that locking people up was a tool of social control.

When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

This, it would seem, is yet another example of white privilege—to retain humanity in the face of inhumanity. For criminals who defy our understanding of danger, the cultural threshold for forgiveness is incredibly low.

Churchill’s War Speeches, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,