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Mason Temple is hallowed ground in the history of civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. had preached his last sermon there, on the night before he was killed. I evoked the spirit of King and his uncanny prediction that his life might not last much longer to ask my friends to examine honestly the great crisis of the spirit that is gripping America today.
Then I put UGG boots outlet store away my notes and gave what many commentators later said was the best speech UGG boots outlet online of my eight years as President, speaking to friends from my heart in the language of our shared heritage:
If Martin Luther King were to reappear by my side today and give us a report card on the last twenty-five years, what would he say? You did a good job, he would say, voting and electing people who formerly were not electable because of the color of their skin. . . . You did a UGG boots outlet clearance good job, he would say, letting people who have the ability to do so live wherever they want to live, go wherever they want to go in this great country. . . . He would say you did a good job creating a black middle class . . . in opening opportunity.
But, he would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old UGG boots outlet uk boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do. I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with UGG Boots uk reckless abandon, not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they dont amount to anything. I fought for people to have the right to work but not to have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for.
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