The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
It’s a reassurance Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. included in several of his speeches over the years, one he shared with crowds across the country.
And if we look at history a certain way, the arc contracts. Dr. King was born 64 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment. President Obama was born only 32 years after that. From 1865 to 1964—less than a century separates the birth of the last person born into slavery from the birth of the first black U.S. president.