Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1966, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death. I see no alternative to direct action and creative nonviolence to raise the conscience of the nation.

                  April is a month to remember the heroic. Bob Greene’s “Spring Vacation with Martin Luther King,” WSJ April 15 2025 and Paul Wolfowitz “Reflections on Lincoln 160 Years After His Murder” in the same issue motivated me to re-read the Gettysburg Address and MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” The Gettysburg Address is poetry that ends with an unshakable optimism, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

                  Martin Luther King’s speech also evokes optimism, “that day when all God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

                  They are immortal in that they serve as a timeless heroic example. Despite all their hardships they were too strong for cynicism relying on religious faith, perseverance and justice.

                  I wish they could have met. But then the optimist in me believes they already have, many times.