Sublime

Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this?” He was staring at his breakfast plate. Calpurnia said, “Tom Robinson’s daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it.” “You tell him I’m proud to get it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at the White House. What are these?” “Rolls,” said Calpurnia. “Estelle down at the hotel sent ’em.”

In the middle of the last century, Lewis marched into the line of fire to summon a nation to be what it had long said it would be but had failed to become. Arrested forty-five times over the course of his life, Lewis suffered a fractured skull and was repeatedly beaten and tear-gassed. He led by example more than by words. He was a peaceful soldier

through the game, Mary pulled out a five-dollar bill and, with great motherly solicitude, told me to go buy myself a hot dog and beer and to please get her a diet Coke. It was one of those moments to die for. After rent, five dollars is actually a significant percentage of her monthly budget. It was the unmatchable gift that only the poor are

She lived in the midst of God’s most treasured souls: the poor, the disregarded, and the humiliated. She had made her schoolhouse into a humble kingdom of acceptance,

On the contrary, he would have despised any ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships. He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing about a grand dinner except

For Lewis, the civil rights struggle always centered on whether the best of the American soul (the grace and the love, the godliness and the generosity) could finally win out over the worst (the racism and the hatred, the fear and the cruelty).

The most outstanding examples of white women’s sisterly solidarity with Black women are associated with Black people’s historical struggle for education. Like Prudence Crandall and Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner literally risked her life as she sought to impart knowledge to young Black women.17 In 1851, when she initiated her project to

Jim Crow South he didn’t. Instead, he forged a note that said, “Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy have some books by HL Mencken?” (because no one would write that about themselves, right?), and checked them out with a stolen library card, pretending they were for someone else.