Sublime

We must face the shameful fact that the church is the most segregated major institution in American society,

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr. worked hard to train leaders

He was as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the creation of the republic in the eighteenth century. This is not hyperbole. It is fact—observable, discernible, undeniable fact.

as I sat there soaking up the living history of my youth from one of the persons who shaped it, I felt honored; yet I couldn’t help but think that by sharing this moment with him I was vicariously experiencing a bit of Dr. King himself. In essence, I was channeling Dr. King through Dr. Abernathy, who had shared virtually every adult-life experience

In the Senate, the South staged an angry filibuster, but with Johnson using pressure and persuasion (civil rights leader James Farmer, seated in the Oval Office, heard the President “cajoling, threatening, everything else, whatever was necessary”), the bill was passed—its key provisions intact—with remarkable speed. And even before it was passed,