Jefferson and Lincoln and King

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Some see in Thomas Jefferson only a hypocrite who owned slaves.

I see Jefferson as a man, admittedly flawed, who lived in a world not of his making which he could not change.

But I will also say that he did not simply "accept that which I cannot change" as in the cleric's serenity prayer. He contributed to the eventual solution in the only place where it could happen: the future. He placed in the hands of, then unknown, leaders a powerful weapon that could be wielded when the time came that it was possible to "change the things they could".

Lincoln: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Gettysburg, November 1863

King: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”
Washington, August 28, 1968
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