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Fifty-eight years ago, Democrat George Wallace stood to present an inaugural address as the incoming governor of Alabama. He delivered one of the most contemptible pieces of rhetoric in American history. Railing against the rising tide of integration and the civil rights movement, Wallace thundered, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Seven months later, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to offer a vision entirely opposite. Drawing from the soaring vision of the Hebrew prophets, he dreamed of a time when “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as brothers and sisters,” when justice would “roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”