The Washington Post. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

It was 50 years ago this August that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. closed his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with his rendering of a dream he had for the country’s future. The soaring final sentences were somewhat extemporaneous-he let his emotions and sense of the occasion carry him past parts of the prepared text and on to the right words, concluding with the rousing “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.” It was an exultant moment for much of this country, and in the national memory it has acquired the gauzy image of a happy ending to our long struggle with racial inequality and bigotry.

Less vibrant in memory is an image from less than three weeks later: four girls dressed all in white because they were to lead youth day services at their Birmingham, Ala., church, their lives suddenly ended by a racial terrorist bombing. “During the short career of Martin Luther King Jr., between 1954 and 1968, the nonviolent civil rights movement lifted the patriotic spirit of the United States toward our defining national purpose,” writes Taylor Branch, a chronicler of those years.

Today, on the national day set aside to honor Dr. King, an African American president will ceremonially begin his second term. Like presidents before him, he has had his ups and downs, mistakes and triumphs. There is, to be sure, an element of bigotry among some of his enemies, but in general it has had a kind of cowardly, subterranean quality to it.

President Obama was assailed mostly for what his critics thought were wrong policies or judgments. In the end, as always, the final verdict was given at the polls; the president was reelected, and his inauguration will be celebrated today -not quite with the rapturous enthusiasm of four years ago but rather with something resembling blessed normality.

Dr. King’s words “Free at last, free at last” were specifically addressed not just to black Americans but to people of all faiths, colors and persuasions. He knew that they were all in need of liberation from the cruel customs and habits of the nation’s past, which held back every one of us in one way or another.