“Not tomorrow, not next week, but now!” was the persistent cry for freedom among people who had never known it. “I am tired of fighting for something that should have been mine at birth,” King often said. That kind of language created a revolutionary spirit that sent people into the streets, prepared to shoulder the cross, ready to meet whatever fate at the hands of mobs or the police. There was no talk about proximate justice—that little bit of justice that whites dole out to blacks when they get ready. God’s justice called for black people to bear witness to freedom now, even unto death.
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