With Sighs Too Deep for Words

“I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours, in Christian America”  (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.).       I’ve heard several versions of this quote attributed to Martin Luther King over the years and because there were so many variations, I decided to research the exact wording as well as the source of this quote. What prompted King to utter this sentence? What was the context? Was it written like “Letter from Birmingham Jail” or “Why We Can’t Wait,” or was it a speech like his famous “I Have a Dream” or “Mountaintop” speeches? Something else?       In my mini-research, I learned that in 1968 on the Dick Cavett Show, James Baldwin attributes at least part of the “segregated hour” quote to Malcolm X: I know as Malcolm X once put it: “the most segregated hour in American...

  “Complicit” On a group’s page, I shared a Facebook post by Ally Henny, written after the murder of Ahmaud Arbery became another shame upon our nation.  This post got five “likes” and 13 comments. Henny began with this paragraph: Honestly, I don’t need white folks sympathy right now because we have been telling you on this very app for years that there’s a problem. Y’all will cry a few tears, make some posts, and then not do crap beyond that. What are you going to do different?  And ended with these two paragraphs: Some of yall are mad because you see yourself as good and you think that I shouldn’t snap at people who want to help. Fine. If you want to help you need to get out here and COLLECT YOUR PEOPLE. You have to deal not only with your own racism but you must get your people to do better. You have to stop tolerating it. You have to seek a brand of justice that elevates the marginalized more than it makes you look good.   At this point yo...