Best lines of this date

And so let freedom ring — from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring — from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring — from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring — from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring — from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring — from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring — from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring — from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of 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, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
__________

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years ago today

3 thoughts on “Best lines of this date”

  1. Whenever I read these words, I can hear them being delivered in his eloquent voice; I can see him addressing the masses gathered before him in rapt attention. This speech still gives me chills; I choke up and my eyes get watery. He was capable of such powerful rhetoric, and he spoke such divine truths. If only we had reached that mountaintop… but we’ve stumbled so many times upon the boulders of oppression and bigotry, fear and ignorance. One despairs of ever achieving a true brotherhood of man, though I tenaciously hang onto a belief in the possibility.

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