The Arc of History Bends Toward Justice

My sister has quoted these words of Martin Luther King, Jr. to me a couple of times in the past few weeks. She said it again tonight as we talked long distance to wish each other a happy election day.

I was so intrigued by this unbelievably powerful statement that I looked up the source--well, after all, I am a librarian.

MLK spoke these words in a sermon delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 1968, less than a month before he was assassinated. The exact quote:

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

In the same sermon, countering the argument that African Americans should be patient and let things happen, let justice unfold in time, he says:

"Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right."

I cannot help but think of MLK tonight, this historic night that he foresaw and foretold in one of his last speeches, a twentieth century Moses crying out, "And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

Getting to the White House is not necessarily getting to the promised land. The promised land is equality and justice throughout the fabric of the land, in the interstices, the detailed handiwork of everyday life in America. But it certainly is a giant step.

When I think of the enormity of the stains on the soul of humankind: countless massacres, institutionalized slavery, the subjugation of the Irish and the Armenians, pogroms and the sickening horror of the Holocaust, death squads in El Salvador: these words, uttered by a prophet in the land of his oppression, fill me with hope tonight:

The arc of history bends toward justice.