ONE autumn, over a century ago, Abraham Lincoln made history. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, a decree that gave slaves in the United States their freedom. Instantly, as described by Booker T. Washington in his book Up from Slavery (1901), slave quarters throughout the country thundered with the sound of joy. For the first time in their lives they could hope.

A century later, also in autumn, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. describ