We ended with a good vespers service that included lots of hymn singing, readings, a dramatic reading by three of our faculty members and a great sermon from Leslie. She quoted one of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches (from his address to the 1967 Southern Christian Leadership Conference:
"A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will 'thingify' them—make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.
"What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, 'America, you must be born again!'
