In what is a very troubled passage for our country, we should not forget how significant it is that we reserve a date calling attention not to a former president or a founder from the revolution of 1776, but to a staunch critic of our injustices. He was killed after giving a speech in Memphis suffused with admonishments to anyone who looked down on others, most powerfully when he noted that the low-paid Americans whose strike he was supporting were “public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.” (snip)

For this reason, the holiday is an occasion to renew hope and to fight for a narrative that sees our nation’s history as a long journey of self-correction. No one championed this view more passionately than former president Barack Obama. In 2015, he offered his most powerful testimony on its behalf when he traveled to Selma, Ala., to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march for voting rights.

“What could be more American than what happened in this place?” Obama asked. “What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people — the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many — coming together to shape their country’s course?”

And he cited Isaiah’s injunction that we “run and not grow weary.”