Of all evils in American society, racial oppression is the most intolerable. Of all priorities for American society, the attainment of racial justice is the most urgent. This is so because the issue of race touches on the very heart of the moral values by which the society lives. Martin Luther King understood this, and the same understanding illuminates his idea of an integrated American society.

The ideal is not only the integration of black Americans in terms of all the rights and privileges promised by the society's political creed; and it is not at all integration that deprives blacks of their cultural identity, as King's detractors (including the posthumous ones) have falsely claimed.