Martin Luther King Jr. Day, observed Monday, is as good a time as any to take stock of progress made toward establishing "a reign of freedom and a rule of justice" that King called for in his Dec. 10, 1964, acceptance address for the Nobel Peace Prize.
King's Oslo speech was delivered as battles were being waged back home to end America's long nightmare of racial injustice. Six months earlier, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had called upon Americans to "close the springs of racial poison."
The thought was nice, but the springs of poison flowed and flowed throughout 1964.