Robert Caro's biography of LBJ: Four volumes and counting

Robert Caro wrote what is, to me, the best biography ever published. And he’s still writing it. His multi-volume history of Lyndon Johnson consumes four thick books and counting.

The entire project is “The Years of Lyndon Johnson” with the individual volumes titled “The Path to Power” (1982), “Means of Ascent,” (1990) “Master of the Senate,” (2002) and “The Passage of Power” (2012). The first volume, which I found the most compelling, begins with Johnson’s grandparents, who were pioneers in the Texas Hill Country in the mid-1800s as settlers discovered that what looked like lush, fertile land was only a couple of inches of topsoil that could not sustain agriculture. The book continues through the years when young Lyndon Johnson was determined to be somebody, to make his mark in a way that his poor father and grandfather had not. 

“The Passage of Power” ends in 1964. Lyndon Johnson is in the White House following the Kennedy Assassination, and he has coaxed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, perhaps the most significant legislation of the generation, into law.

Caro initially said he would write a conventional, one-volume biography, like his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Robert Moses. But he kept finding more and more facts about Johnson, so he wrote a second volume and a third and a fourth. The fifth volume is not finished yet, and there is no guarantee that it will be the final one.

Reading these books taught me more about Lyndon Johnson than I ever wanted to know. He was conniving, egotistical, stubborn, cruel and abusive at times, and focused on being the Great Man he had wanted to be since childhood. He cheated on his faithful, adoring wife, destroyed the lives of young men who worked on his staff in Congress and succeeded in part by callously using people who trusted him.

He was also probably the most effective legislator in American history. He could be persuasive, even charming, and if that didn’t work, he could be threatening, vindictive and backstabbing to get his way. His success in getting passage of civil rights bills is extraordinary. You can love him or hate him for that and for his “Great Society” programs, but you have to admit he changed this country.

The minute detail in these books is astonishing. Caro describes long-ago events in great detail. He uncovers episodes that had never been made public, including a hard-to-believe years-long affair between Johnson and a glamorous, wealthy member of Washington’s social elite.

            Caro wrote a long article for The New Yorker (Jan. 28, 2019, edition) that explains how he got so deep into the life of LBJ. He began his research in 1976 and has worked continuously on his expanded biography since then.

            The New Yorker article makes a good textbook for young historians or news reporters learning how to research and interview. Caro digs deep into files stashed away in libraries and archives to find facts he was looking for or facts he’d never considered. No mention is too insignificant for him to not follow up. Any name he sees is followed up with an interview or several interviews of the same person, peeling away the lies and the cover-ups until he gets to the bottom of the matter. I recommend the article to anyone doing historical research.

            Although I tend to be a slow, plodding, easily distracted reader, I dove into each of Caro’s LBJ volumes  (which average close to 1,000 pages) with excitement and eagerness. I’m looking forward to the fifth installment, but Caro is 84 and admits that his ambitions for this biography might exceed his mortality. I’m counting on that final volume.

Hal Tarleton was managing editor, editor and opinion editor of The Wilson Daily Times. Contact him at haltarleton@myglnc.com.

This post originally appeared in The Wilson Times.

Book describes civil rights struggle in South

“In Darkest South Carolina” by Brian Hicks tells the story of J. Waties Waring, a federal district judge in Charleston, S.C., and his largely overlooked efforts to have school segregation outlawed as unconstitutional. Waring’s story, and Charleston’s story, is also the story of the nation, particularly the South, during the Jim Crow era.

            I had never heard of Waring, except to see a historic marker about him on Meeting Street in Charleston, but the gift of this book filled me in. Although the Confederacy lost the Civil War, its culture and its societal rules lived on for a century. The removal of federal troops from the South in 1876 and the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, which instituted the “separate but equal” standard in public accommodations, gave racist elements in the population the green light to subjugate African-Americans throughout the nation, but especially in the South.

            Waring, a child of the South who was accustomed to seeing black servitude and oppression as the natural order of things, gradually came to recognize the injustice of that society. As a federal judge, Waring saw his position as an opportunity, even a duty, to bring justice to black South Carolinians.

            In an age when the Democratic Party ruled South Carolina and most other Southern states, a vestige of white citizens’ animus against Republicans rooted in Civil War and Reconstruction resentments, black citizens were barred from voting in the Democratic Primary. Claiming they were a club and had the right to choose their members, Democrats used the “white primary” to disenfranchise blacks. The Supreme Court ruled Georgia’s white primary unconstitutional in 1946. A year later, Judge Waring affirmed that the precedent would apply in a South Carolina case as well. At the same time, he ruled in another case that South Carolina school districts could not pay white teachers more than it paid black teachers. That ruling did not challenge “separate but equal,” but it did require schools to truly be equal in pay, curriculum, facilities, buses, etc.

            Waring became an ally of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in his quest to win equal rights for America’s black population. Marshall argued several cases before Waring, and the two became close friends. It was only a matter of timing that a Topeka, Kansas, case arrived at the Supreme Court before South Carolina cases in which Waring had ruled that segregated schools denied black students an equal education, even if facilities, teacher pay and curriculum were equal. The Warren Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and set the nation on a path toward racial equality using the reasoning Waring employed in South Carolina.

            Waring’s support for civil rights angered his former friends and most whites throughout the state. Harassing phone calls and violent attacks got so bad that federal marshals had to be assigned to protect Waring and his family. Politicians such as Strom Thurmond railed against the judge in their campaign speeches, vowing to run him out of South Carolina.

            Charleston Post & Courier columnist Hicks used the newspaper’s archives to document Waring’s historic impact and courage, even though the newspaper was not a supporter of Waring, who was vilified in newspaper editorials.

            Hicks’ book is a good companion to Taylor Branch’s “Eyes on the Prize” history of the civil rights movement and its leaders. While Branch’s book concentrates on the legendary leaders of the 1950s-60s, Hicks pinpoints one brave judge and his efforts to bring racial justice to South Carolina and the nation.

            To Southerners of my generation and older, much of this story will be familiar and painful. Those who claim that race relations “are worse than ever’ have forgotten just how bad things were 70 years ago. Books like this one set the story straight.

Hal Tarleton was managing editor, editor and opinion editor at The Wilson Daily Times for 29 years. Contact him at haltarleton@myglnc.com.

Integration, civil rights came slowly to South

In last week’s column I wrote about Federal District Court Judge Waites Waring and his efforts to bring justice to African-American teachers and students in South Carolina from the 1940s to the 1960s.

            The book set me to thinking about the history I remember from that era as the South dealt with the Supreme Court’s mandate to desegregate schools. That mandate took decades to take full effect, and some would say that racial segregation still exists in public schools.

            When my classmates and I entered the N.C. public school system in 1955, we did not think there was anything unusual in the existence of some public schools being designated for white children and some being designated for black children. It was simply how the world existed. But in 1954 the Supreme Court had found school segregation to be unconstitutional, and gradual movements toward desegregation began (not with the court’s requirement for “all deliberate speed”). I was in high school, in a consolidated, countywide high school, when African-American students and teachers first appeared in my classrooms.

            Southerners determined to keep school segregation in place declared “massive resistance” to any effort to force full integration. Anson County, where I grew up, saw a mandate to make schools for black students better, at least on a par with the white schools, so county officials built a new, consolidated black high school that was to open the year after I graduated from the white high school that was only six years old. Federal officials declared the two segregated high schools illegal. Local officials countered with a plan to send all male students to one high school and all girls to the other school. The feds rejected that plan, too, and my younger sister graduated from the new, fully integrated high school.

            When my family moved to Wilson in 1980, we were impressed with the desegregation solution that was in place here. Former white schools were paired with former black schools so that all students, black and white, would spend four years in their “home school” and then be bused to the paired school outside their racially identifiable neighborhoods.

            This plan gave Wilson a great advantage compared to neighboring Nash and Wayne counties, which still had separate city and county school systems with obvious racial imbalances. Wilson County, thanks to young attorney Jim Hunt and others, had merged city and county schools in the 1970s. This single system made Wilson more attractive for industry.

            Wilson’s desegregation solution did not last very long. Changing residential patterns created school populations with large black majorities in several schools.

          A 50-member citizen task force was ordered to come up with a new, practical and federally acceptable integration plan. The task force worked hard for two years, trying to find a way to evenly balance racial populations in all schools. In a county with a few densely populated areas and some very rural areas, it was extremely difficult to bring about the preferred balance at all schools. Then the Board of Education threw out both plans the task force had recommended. Meanwhile, the federal court that had been overseeing the school system’s compliance with integration law decided the system had attained “unitary” status and ended its oversight.

            When the school board adopted a new neighborhood-based school attendance plan, some black members of the board voted for the plan, even though the plan made no effort to racially balance school populations. Most parents, black and white, have quietly accepted the neighborhood plan.

            The latest concern for public schools and their students is competition from private and charter schools, as well as home schools. Public school systems are losing students and money to the new options, as this newspaper has reported. Change is nothing new for school systems that have been reforming for more than 70 years.

This column first appeared in The Wilson Times.

Hal Tarleton was managing editor, editor and opinion editor of The Wilson Daily Times for 29 years. Contact him at haltarleton@myglnc.com.

           

           

One person brings more effective change than thousands of protesters

Last night, I watched a documentary on the life of George C. Marshall, a man many consider the most important American of the 20th century. Without Marshall, the Allies might not have defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Without Marshall, Europe might not have fully recovered from the destruction and devastation of World War II, even now. Marshall, who was Army chief of staff, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, and key advisor to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, was responsible for success in war and in peace as his Marshall Plan laid the foresighted plans for Europe's recovery from war and its nurturing of democratic institutions and attitudes.

Even so, few Americans under the age of 60 know much about Marshall, if they know the name at all, and that's a shame. Marshall embodied the high principles and self-sacrifice of "public servants." Reared on the principles of democracy, civic involvement and personal honor in 19th century Virginia and tempered by his education at Virginia Military Institute, Marshall offered, a clear, knowledgeable, sincere voice to political debate without ever following the path of political partisanship.

Today, news accounts tell the story of clashing street demonstrations in California and Oregon, where belligerent and (sometimes) armed advocates fought each other on the streets as protests degenerated into chaotic clashes. These are just the sorts of things that Marshall opposed throughout his career. He argued for increases in defense spending to oppose threats from Germany, Italy and Japan. He argued for American generosity to salvage the collapsed governments and wretched lives of Europe. Isolationists vehemently opposed him, but his persuasive logic won the votes in Congress to pass his strategic plans.

Massive marches and demonstrations have only rarely succeeded in bringing about significant political change. Civil rights demonstrations of the 1950s and 1960s ultimately prevailed, but only after John F. Kennedy's assassination and Lyndon Johnson consummate political skills pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Voting Rights Act and other landmark legislation.

Massive demonstrations during the Vietnam War did not persuade Congress to stop funding the war or force a unilateral withdrawal. President Nixon's decision to switch to an all-volunteer army in 1973 sucked the life out of anti-war and anti-draft movements.

In a democracy, the surest way of effecting change comes at the ballot box, and this is how it should be. Changing Congress and changing the occupant of the White House are the means to political change in this country. Woe to us if we allow our political future to be determined by mobs in the street.

News, nostalgia and inspiration at the Newseum

On our first visit to Washington, D.C., in 25 years, my wife and I went to the Newseum, located at 6th Street and Constitution Avenue. Neither of us was sure what the Newseum would be like, but we paid our entry fee and began exploring the six levels of exhibits about newspapers, news reporting, and history.

It was a worthwhile visit, although the galleries and corridors and stairs could be a maze. Of particular interest to us were a video presentation of reporters talking about their response to 9/11. They were at work in Manhattan when the terrorists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center. Watching the scenes and hearing the reporters' disbelief (like all of us) that this could be happening, took us back to that horrific day 16 years ago. Despite the life-risking dangers as the towers fell and thousands died, the reporters swallowed their personal feelings, fears and concerns for themselves, their friends and their families, and continued to report what was happening.

I couldn't help thinking that the current president of the United States called these self-sacrificing reporters "enemies of the people" and purveyors of "fake news." The close-up video of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center was so terrifying and so clearly an airliner aimed directly at the building that I once again could not understand how anyone could deny that this tragedy was carried out by Islamic terrorists who hijacked four aircraft in a well-planned and malevolent plot against the United States. Yet some conspiracy theorists even today say the whole thing was carried out by the federal government.

Another exhibit in the Newseum examined the relationship of President John F. Kennedy with the press. Kennedy seemed to enjoy sparring with reporters at news conferences, and an interview video shows Kennedy saying that the  adversarial relationship between the press and the government is a natural and healthy thing. Another exhibit celebrated JFK on the 100th anniversary of his birth. These exhibits gave me a flood of nostalgia. The grief I had felt in 1963 was renewed hearing this brilliant, articulate, inspiring and short-lived president. I could not avoid a comparison between this man, who wrote books and regularly read 15 newspapers a day, to the current president, who boasts that he never reads books and requires the White House staff to limit any briefing papers, no matter how complex the issue, to one page. How far we have fallen!

Another Newseum exhibit was a 50th anniversary look back at the civil rights era of the 1960s. The cruelty of segregation and the officials who responded to protesters with violence were exceeded only by the murders of many civil rights advocates and bystanders. It's an era worth remembering not only because of the illogical cruelty and oppression but also to be reminded of how far we have come.

The Newseum is a stop to include on your Washington trip. I only wish the museum had offered a discount if I showed my old press pass (I still have it).

Revered editor would be aghast at today's newspaper

While reading a book about the 1960s civil rights movement, I came across the name of Claude Sitton, who earned his reputation as an unsurpassed reporter while covering civil rights in the South during that era and went on to be the legendary editor of the Raleigh News & Observer. The mention made me wonder what Sitton would think of the current N&O.

Sitton, whom I met but can't say I knew, had a reputation as a very serious, unstoppable pursuer of truth in the form of news. (Sitton died earlier this year.) His N&O scoured state government for scandal and wrongdoing, and his front pages were deadly serious. There were few examples of feel-good, touchy-feely, cute-kittens kinds of stories in the N&O of those days, and there was minimal coverage of routine crime of the sort many television newscasts emphasized — "if it bleeds, it leads." He was a champion of a free press, and his leadership showed why a free press was both a necessity and a rationale for constitutional protections for the news media.

Unfortunately, the N&O has veered from Sitton's example since he retired 25 years ago. The newspaper business has changed. The entire business model that served newspapers for two centuries — selling print advertising to support news reporting — has collapsed. Thousands of newspaper employees have been laid off. Just as damaging as the revenue loss has been a change in focus for many newspapers, including the N&O. Facing an inability to compete with broadcast and online news for immediacy and urgency, newspapers have shifted their focus to "softer" news — heart-tugging or whimsical stories that are not "big" news, but they're local, and they're not all over the Internet before they can get into print. A legion of newspaper consultants has insisted that soft, hyper-local news is the print newspaper's only hope for survival.

The N&O's latest redesign, which emphasizes color, subheads, and large, smiling pictures of the reporters, is an extension of this trend.

Sitton, I'm convinced, would have none of it. He wouldn't bury the infighting over the state budget or the refugee tragedy in eastern Europe deep inside the paper. He wouldn't make a cute story about a cemetery tour or a store covered in coffee mugs the dominant story on 1A. Call him a curmudgeon, but he knew why the Founding Fathers wanted to protect press freedom. It wasn't to make America safe for cute cat videos.

Like any newspaper editor, Sitton defended the First Amendment, which is under assault from the left (the influence of money in politics) and right (alleged liberal bias of the "mainstream media"). If all today's newspapers are going to do with their precious press freedom is to publish cute, hyper-local stories while ignoring their "watchdog" role in keeping local, state and federal government, as well as other powerful entities, such as corporations, universities, unions and the military honest, why have a First Amendment at all?

If repeal of the First Amendment were to come before Congress (and the states), would today's newspapers be able to defend freedom of the press by citing what a free press is doing to protect democracy and inform voters? I cringe at the thought.

Shut 'em down, Republicans suggest

Some Republican legislators are determined to take the University of North Carolina down a notch or two by eliminating a campus or two from the 16-campus UNC system. The proposal, which cropped up earlier this month, would have the state look at the feasibility of closing down some campuses to save the state money. 

North Carolina has a proud history of quality higher education. It is home to the first state university, and UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State rank high in surveys of quality and value. Under the heroic leadership of William Friday, the UNC system rose to national prominence, despite frequent tiffs between campuses and occasional fights with the legislature.

Not all UNC campuses offer the quality of the flagship universities. The majority of the 16 campuses wore the name "college" or something similar before being folded into the UNC system. First came a couple of "regional universities" in the east and west to augment the offerings at Chapel Hill and N.C. State. But before that, the state saw fit to establish a campus for the education of women, called the Women's College of the University of North Carolina, now the co-educational (an archaic term) UNC-Greensboro. Not only did North Carolina set aside a college for women, it set aside colleges for the education of Negroes (as African-Americans were called in those days). There was even a college for the education of indigenous Americans at Pembroke, although the Lumbee tribe there had never gained federal recognition.

And that is why the UNC system has so many campuses, many of them in close proximity, in a state that is not all that large, geographically. And that is also why it will be politically difficult to close any campuses, even those that may be under-attended or under-performing. Combining campuses or shifting academic departments from one campus to another was a goal of the 1970s federal civil rights case against UNC. Ten years earlier, North Carolina had merged a dual system of public education by merging white and black public schools, even if it meant closing some campuses. Friday and the state fought back against the feds, claiming that each campus had a special role, and UNC eventually won.

Now Republicans in the legislature want to do what the Democrats in the Carter administration failed to do — close some UNC campuses. The cause this time is efficiency, not civil rights. But civil rights, this time, will make closing more difficult. Imagine, for instance a proposal to merge UNC-G and N.C. A&T, both located in Greensboro, or to close Elizabeth City State, which has just 2,878 students — 31,000 fewer than N.C. State.

To close or merge campuses that taught black students in the days of segregation would be an affront to black history and black pride. Politically, it would be deadly. These campuses are HBCUs — Historically Black Colleges or Universities — giving them special status in higher education and in civil rights.

Closing UNC-Pembroke would likewise offend the Native American constituency, and closing the smallest of the campuses — UNC-Asheville (3,751 students) or Elizabeth City State (2,878 students) would take higher education out of an isolated region of the state. The N.C. School of the Arts (880 students) and School of Science and Math (680 students in their final two years of high school) have special missions and have gained national recognition for their innovations and success.

So where does that leave the Republican budget slashers? They will have to do what legislators and university administrators have always done — nibble away at the expenses and try not to hurt the quality of education. If they are smart, they won't risk the anger of HBCU alumni or art aficionados or the struggling residents of poor, rural regions whose solitary hope might be the small university that holds the area together. 

North Carolina would never plan a university system with so many campuses scattered, almost helter-skelter, around the state. But now that it has just such a system, altering it won't be easy.

A new Obama attitude for a second term

President Obama's second inaugural speech is being hailed as decidedly ideological, perhaps even a signpost toward more liberal policies to come. I watched the speech and thought it was a good but not great speech — blessedly short (unlike too many big speeches) and far-reaching in its scope. It struck me as a more political than a statesman-like speech, one that laid out policy ambitions foremost but also aspired to the great national ideals of this country.

Some have called it a "civil rights speech," and it had that element, with mentions of seminal events in the struggle for the civil rights of women, black Americans, and gays. But it also had allusions to the historic moments of the past, from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention to the Civil War. Obama embraced the principles that guided the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, but he warned that the principles of those great moments must not leave a nation stagnant, mired in the world of the 18th or 19th century. While standing by our historic values and principles, America must address modern issues that would never have occurred to Washington or Lincoln, he suggested.

The speech laid out an itinerary of liberal causes, from gay rights to climate change, but did not forsake negotiation or compromise on these issues. While making clear his objectives, the president did not list any non-negotiable demands. He clearly sees his election victory as an opportunity to be more liberal (let's use the "L-word" and not euphemistic "progressive") in his second term.

As the crowds go home and the inaugural platform is torn down, we will see whether the more assertive Obama can find a way to deal with a divided Congress to achieve his goals and also to fix the runaway national debt and chronic budget deficit.

Fifty years ago, racism ruled America

I was in a meeting earlier this week with a group of about a dozen people I didn't know. The group leader was decrying the consequences of the Great Recession, which has caused a big increase in requests for help from nonprofits, increased stress on families and an uptick in the homeless population. Along with everyone else, I could only nod my head in agreement. Then she said something that floored me: "I think racism is worse today than it has ever been!"

I started to raise my hand and ask, "Where are you from?" The woman leading the group appeared to be about my age, maybe a little older. Surely, she should be able to remember what it was like 50 years ago, when black North Carolinians could not eat in a restaurant where whites ate, could not sleep in a motel where whites slept, could not attend schools white children attended, could not live in a neighborhood where whites lived, often could not vote in elections, could not drink from water fountains or use the bathrooms used by whites, and would not even be considered for decent jobs. Fifty years ago, none of the eight or 10 African-American women gathered in that room could have held the executive and managerial positions they hold today. The meeting they were attending, in which whites and blacks discussed issues on an equal footing, could not have happened then. If you think racism is worse today than it was 50 years ago, you have a serious memory problem.

That's not to say that racism has been eradicated. Like other forms of evil, it keeps poking its ugly head out of its manure pile only to be beaten back again. Racial prejudice is probably as old as that prehistoric time when humans first differentiated themselves by skin color and other distinguishing features. Racism will continue to plague the human condition from time to time, but its days of ordering society and building senseless barriers are over, at least in this country.

Fifty years after a federal law made it possible for African-Americans to vote unimpeded in this nation, we elected an African-American president. That is an extraordinary achievement! Like other presidents, this one is assailed by critics, and a few of those critics may be motivated, at least in part, by racism, but it is political doctrine, not race, that is the primary divisive force today.

Anyone who remembers the 1960s and before can testify to the lunacy of claims that racism is worse today than ever before. America should proudly proclaim its victory over the evil forces of entrenched racism and never forget how bad, how ridiculous, society was before the civil rights era.

Banner on the mall says it all: We have overcome

A banner held up at Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama caught my eye as the television camera panned across the mall. It said: "We Have Overcome."

What greater proof could be asked for to show that the refrain of that civil rights anthem had at last been achieved? A black man had been inaugurated president of the United States, bolstered by the votes of, yes, the vast majority of African-American voters but also by a clear majority of white voters. As police and state troopers turned fire hoses, police dogs and clubs on protesters in the early 1960s, the demonstrators responded by singing "We shall overcome ... someday." For the martyrs of the civil rights demonstrations and their heirs — and indeed for all Americans — "someday" came on Jan. 20, 2009. The promise, the hope, the dream has been fulfilled in a time far earlier than most veterans of that era could have imagined. Barack Obama will not wipe out all vestiges of racism, ill will and unfairness ("Life is unfair" was one of President Kennedy's favorite sayings), but his achievement proves that legal segregation and societal prejudices cannot hold back a determined, persistent and talented leader.

That banner on the mall showed how far we have come, appropriately taking racial equality out of the future tense and into the present.

Martin Luther King's 1963 still reverberates

Thanks to NPR, I caught a replay of Martin Luther King's Aug. 28, 1963, "I Have a Dream" speech while I was in the car. It was part of an NPR program's coverage of the  MLK Holiday. At the end of my short trip, I sat there, mesmerized, and listened to the iconic speech to the very end.

A day before America inaugurates a new president who is known for his accomplished speechmaking, it's instructive to hear again or read again King's most famous address. By any rhetorical standard, it's a remarkable speech, filled with vivid language and sharp, instructive metaphors. Consider this short paragraph from the speech: After saying that black America had come to Washington to cash a check for the guarantees of freedom and opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, King says, "But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity in this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that gives us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."

Nobody, including Barack Obama, makes speeches that rich and evocative any more. Few in history ever have. Even without its ending flourish with its repeated chant of "I have a dream," King's speech would be recognized as a powerful call for civil rights and a model of effective rhetoric. He challenged a nation to live up to its promises and, more important, to recognize that those promises have been denied to a large portion of the population.

His rhetorical style honed in the pulpit of churches in Alabama and Georgia, King borrowed the phrases of  the church, quoting the prophet Amos that "justice will roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream" and the prophet Isaiah's promise that mountains will be laid low and valleys will be filled, the way shall be made straight "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." Biblical quotations in political speeches were more common 45 years ago and were more familiar to American audiences, but no one used biblical quotes better than King, who had earned a Ph.D. in theology.

It is appropriate to reread King's speech (to get the full impact, listen to King's own powerful delivery) on this holiday in his honor. And on this day before the inauguration Barack Obama, it is instructive to realize how far this nation has come since King stood before Lincoln's statue. His plea that day in 1963 was for basic human rights for black citizens — the right to vote, the right to be served in restaurants, the right to use a public bathroom, the right to sleep in a motel. His plea was for civil rights for "The Negro," a term that seems, at best, quaint, today. And today, we can rejoice that the basic rights that King demanded — that "check" promised in the Constitution — has not been rejected for insufficient funds; the bank of justice is not bankrupt. King's dream lives in a newly elected president who won the votes of white voters who ignored the "color of his skin."

Don't stop reading or listening to King's speech. Let it live forever. But don't ever think that things haven't improved since 1963.