"We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom," Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in Letter from a Birmingham Jail. "Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny."
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This deserves greater exposure:
KING (Stride Toward Freedom (1958) page 138):
I could not go to sleep. While I lay in that quiet front bedroom, with a distant street lamp throwing a reassuring glow through the curtained window, I began to think of the viciousness of people who would bomb my home. I could feel the anger rising when I realized that my wife and baby could have been killed. I thought about the city commissioners and all the statements that they had made about me and the Negro generally. I was once more on the verge of corroding anger. And once more I caught myself and said: “You must not allow yourself to become bitter.”
I tried to put…