He recited his text verbatim until a short run near the end: “We will not be satisfied until justice runs down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The crowd responded to the pulsating emotion transmitted from the prophet Amos, and King could not bring himself to deliver the next line of his prepared text, which by contrast opened its lamest and most pretentious section (“And so today, let us go back to our communities as members of the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction”). Instead, extemporaneously, he urged them to return to their
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