Bending Toward Justice

“The arc of the moral universe is long,
 but it bends toward justice..."   Martin Luther King, Jr.

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All of us love that quotation from America’s foremost civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  It lifts our spirits in moments of darkest doubt.  But is it true?  Does the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice? 

The answer culled from the grand sweep of history seems to be:  Only when laws recognize basic human rights and real people are committed to the task of bending.  In the case of justice--the virtue of giving the other his or her due--progress has always depended on courageous individuals recognizing injustice and acting.  The Code of Hammurabi contains perhaps the earliest codified concern for justice -- laws set forth so that "the strong might not injure the weak."   That’s not about love – it’s about justice, and the injustice of the big guy being able to trample the little guy. 

The evolution of American law and society provides thousands of examples of the ongoing struggle for justice bearing fruit.  “All men are created equal with certain unalienable rights” bore the first fruit in a republic, but it was insufficient.  The arc of the moral universe bent with the abolition of slavery, and then civil rights legislation ensuring African American and women’s rights.  It continued its slope with labor laws prohibiting child labor and ensuring safer and cleaner working environments.  We can look back on fruitful Social Gospel initiatives in the nineteenth century to assist immigrants and city dwellers, to expose corruption, to spotlight indignity.  But those initiatives on behalf of “liberty and justice for all” did not just happen. Laws did not evolve on their own.  They were spurred by real people doing real work to ensure justice.

Ida B. Wells

One thinks of Jacob Riis, Danish immigrant turned photographer, who trained his camera lens on squalid tenement house life New York City, and moved the conscience of a generation.  One thinks of Jane Addams, who was born to privilege in Chicago, but used her family wealth to establish settlement houses to assist impoverished immigrant communities.  Or Ida Tarbell, who fearlessly exposed the corrupt business practices of Standard Oil and broke the back of monopoly.  Or Upton Sinclair who shone a light on nauseating meatpacking processes and worked for pure food supply.  Or Ida B. Wells, who drew national attention to the evil of lynching and changed minds and hearts.  These “muckrakers” as they were known at the time, were all real people, warriors for justice, whose life and work ensured movement toward a more just society.

Does the arc bend on its own?  No. Justice doesn’t just happen.  History provides ample evidence of that.  Would Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany ultimately have bent the arc toward justice?  Would Stalin and his secret police?  Would Pol Pot?  No.  Their ideas, their regimes, their actions, and the sheer might of their enforcement apparatus would not have allowed it.  We can always count on human nature, with its unquenchable striving for freedom to rise up occasionally in defense of human dignity and lend force to the ongoing quest for justice.  But only the presence of good law and real warriors for justice can ensure that the arc will bend. America has had both.  And continues to be blessed.

Mary Beth Klee

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