Quote of the day

One thing that's come to me, during this election, is how so many people view pre-Civil Rights movement America as this distant aberration. There's sort of this belief that--at some point in the past--there were slaves in this country. And then Abe Lincoln ended it all and saved the union, though the people who fought Abe were honorable men themselves (can't forget that caveat). Then later someone put up some signs saying "Whites Only." A few bad apples killed some black people who didn't like the signs. Then Martin Luther King proclaimed he had a dream, and it was huggie time--until some fool, motivated only by his own individual sense of evil, killed him. But we're mostly all better now. --Ta-Nehisi Coates