I have to admit I’m not nearly as familiar with MLK Jr. as I am with Frederick Douglass. My copy of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is in storage, so it might be a while before I can provide extensive documentation.

However, there is the very famous Douglass quote countering radical abolitionists who wanted to cancel slaveowners and never talk to them. But Douglass did talk to them when he felt there was good that could come of it: “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

There is Douglass’ sympathy for the plight of the poor and downtrodden in London: “I see much here to remind me of my former condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over. He who really and truly feels for the American slave, cannot steel his heart to the woes of others.”

He speaks of his embrace of Christianity as a teenager: “for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted mourner, traveling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted.”

In his masterful speech in 1890, after immense resurgence of white supremacy in the South, after going on at great length about all the evils being perpetrated against blacks and calling out individual wrongdoers, he ends with an amazing declaration of hope and inclusiveness: “The business of government is to hold its broad shield over all and to see that every American citizen is alike and equally protected in his civil and personal rights. My confidence is strong and high in the nation as a whole. I believe in its justice and in its power. I believe that it means to keep its word with its colored citizens. I believe in its progress, in its moral as well as its material civilization. Its trend is in the right direction. Its fundamental principles are sound. Its conception of humanity and of human rights is clear and comprehensive. Its progress is fettered by no State religion tending to repress liberal thought: by no order of nobility tending to keep down the toiling masses: by no divine right theory tending to national stagnation under the idea of stability. It stands out free and clear with nothing to obstruct its view of the lessons of reason and experience.”

He was as inclusive as all heck, to the outrage of people who thought that being less inclusive was taking a stronger stand.

I thought your vision of hope was modeled in the same vein. (“One-up” was an exaggeration, of course. He’s already pretty much maxed out.)

But apparently I was wrong.