Word: tb
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...TB: And so I don't really know, but I do think that the vision and what he was talking about, if he survived his health-his health and his sanity-through the end of the movement period, I think he would have had a lot to say about the world and about the end of apartheid in South Africa...
...TB: It was surprising to me how he emphasized it more and more as other people emphasized it less and less. I didn't really expect that. I think maybe he emphasized it more and more because it was the bridge between the two footholds of his message to America, the spiritual one and the patriotic one, what I call equal souls and equal boats. A mark of King oratory is that he would always offer you two entry points, one through patriotic documents about all men are created equal. Equal votes is the heritage of our country...
...TB: Yes, but what I'm saying is I think he had a strong conviction that what mediated between those two things is nonviolence. A vote is a piece of nonviolence. That's what it is, and the heart of the religious tradition that made the prophets say, put down your swords and ploughshares and you, even a King, will be measured by the way you treat widows and orphans because they have equal souls before God, is kind of a root basis for democracy and politics. So, I have a line in there where he put one foot...
...TB: What he said was, the important thing is that first, we have to believe we can do something about this. We're putting this on the agenda because we think we can do something, not necessarily solve it, but freedom has worked miracles before. Nobody had thought that people in Lowndes County, Ala., would ever be able to vote, and they are, and there's no terror there, and that came because somebody dreamed that it was possible when others thought that it wasn't. He was saying, let's put these wretched conditions of poverty on the table...
...TB: I don't know. I get that question all the time. Usually what I say is they're rare. Any kind of overarching leader. Why aren't there more Abraham Lincolns? They're very rare. They're a product of the times, and of course, King's time was a time when we were wrestling with what the free world meant. Our survival stands on what its inner meaning is, and also of course, he arrived because he was a surprise. Nobody expected an overarching leader of American freedom to be a black man. I mean people...