The "nine-word problem" is real, of course, but what I find more troubling is the "fourteen-word problem." Those fourteen words are "...not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The nine words, at least, convey information which can be neither debated nor refuted. The longer, fourteen-word excerpt is deliberately taken out of context by white equivocators and used as a cudgel against the very ideas that King promoted.

We should all be disturbed that the civil-rights movement is flattened to King as an icon and Parks as a peaceful legend. There is so much more to know. However, while we're learning more, we must also protest loudly each and every time we hear King's words taken out of context, removed from their frame of reference, and smugly used by people who actively fight civil rights and equality today.