"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
A new movement that reflects the teachings of King would be, like a great jazz band, inclusive and democratic. It would understand history and build on tradition. It would cherish individuality but respect the social collectivity upon which freedom thrives. It would defend those rules (like the Bill of Rights) that affirm human dignity and work to change those other rules that stifle the creative spirit.
The trumpet player Art Farmer...explains that jazz treats musicians who have passed as if they are all still living. We speak of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Lester Young in the present tense as if they were with us, he said, because when we play their records we hear their spirit.
And so it is with Martin Luther King whose spirit is still shining and still very much needed.
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The only sin's/In my skin: Hear "(What Did I Do to be So) Black and Blue," performed by Ethel Waters and Louis Armstrong.