To lift up a vision of justice “one day,” when “our nation will realize its true heroes,” King drew upon memories etched in his speeches since the Montgomery bus boycott. He pictured first among future honorees the “old, oppressed, battered Negro women,” symbolized by the steadfast walker Mother Pollard, “who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness, ‘My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.’”
