King understood the civil rights movement as a chapter in an ongoing national story in which the latent energies of the American Revolution kept radiating out their full implications until they enveloped all people regardless of creed, color, or gender. Within this narrative, all explicit expressions of racial prejudice were placed on the permanent defensive, outspoken advocates of white supremacy were now relegated to the political fringes, and America’s racial conversation for the first time spoke with a discernibly liberal accent. The new narrative featured the upside of the Jeffersonian
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