The words of Leviticus 25:10 are inscribed on the United States Liberty Bell. But words on a bell do not insure that liberty is a reality for all citizens.

In 1963, many years after the bell was made, people in the United States were arrested and beaten because of the color of their skin and because they wanted liberty. That year in Birmingham, Alabama, a leader who led a nonviolent protest march was arrested and imprisoned. Outside the prison white people called him a communist and said he should be hanged. Police beat his unarmed followers. Birmingham was on the brink of a riot. Then Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," urging his followers to forgive all who oppressed them. Tensions abated.

Many people remember his August 23, 1963, speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He said, "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, `Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"