Remember went the oval office went beige in a make over and the Obamas commissioned a new rug with the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote on it? It was a lovely quote:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
And then we found out that it wasn’t an MLK quote at all? The Washington Post tracked down the right guy:
The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington. For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you’re fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.
And the historical gremlins appear to be at it again. As the MLK monument is being dedicated this weekend. It resides between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials along the tidal basin. From the AP:
It includes a 30-foot-tall sculpture of King and a 450-foot-long granite wall inscribed with 14 quotations from the civil rights leader. The sheer size of the sculpture of King sets it apart from nearby statues of Jefferson and Lincoln, which are both about 20 feet tall, though inside larger monuments.
And guess which quote is used?
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Nice quote.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com