I had also learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Although I came from a home of economic security and relative comfort, I could never get out of my mind the economic insecurity of many of my playmates and the tragic poverty of those living around me. During my late teens I worked two summers (against my fathe

Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. may have understood American Protestantism better than anyone. By staging resistance at the center of ordinary life (again on buses and at diners), he revealed an overwhelming lack of flourishing.

Martin Luther King glumly observed from Birmingham’s Thomas Jefferson Hotel that “white Alabamians are desperately grasping for a way to return to the old days of white supremacy.”

NONVIOLENCE is an orphan among democratic ideas. It has nearly vanished from public discourse even though the most basic element of free government—the vote—has no other meaning. Every ballot is a piece of nonviolence, signifying hard-won consent to raise politics above firepower and bloody conquest.