Lincoln×Jr.

Two men who met death standing speak on the meal before the mountain.

00:00of08:51

legend · A

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865

Starts with a joke. Ends you.

corpus22.7k pages · letters, debates, speeches

Vera speaking

Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., on On the meal they eat before something hard.

legend · B

Martin Luther King Jr.

1929–1968

Every sentence arrives on time

corpus11.3k pages · sermons, speeches, letters

full transcript

Vera
Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., on On the meal they eat before something hard.
Abraham Lincoln
You know, Reverend, I once heard a fellow say he couldn't eat breakfast the morning of a duel because his stomach was tied up like a Methodist hymnal. I told him that was precisely when a man ought to eat—because you never know if you'll get supper.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Lincoln, there is wisdom in that humor. But I confess, the morning I knew Birmingham awaited—when Bull Connor's dogs and fire hoses were a certainty—I could barely touch my grits. My wife Coretta put the plate before me and I looked at those eggs like they were stones.
Abraham Lincoln
Did you eat them?
Martin Luther King Jr.
I ate them. Not because I was hungry. But because a man who leads children into danger has no right to weakness they can see.
Abraham Lincoln
That's the rail-splitter's truth right there. The night before I signed the Emancipation—January first, eighteen sixty-three—my hand was so swollen from shaking hands at the New Year's reception I could barely hold a fork. Mary insisted I eat something. I managed some cold chicken, I think. Tasted like paper.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Your hand was swollen, but you would not let it tremble when you signed. I have read that account. You paused before the signature because you knew if your hand shook, posterity would say Abraham Lincoln hesitated to free the slaves.
Abraham Lincoln
I steadied it. Took a moment. Then wrote my whole name out—clear as I could make it. But here's the thing, Reverend: that wasn't the hard meal. The hard meal was months earlier, after Second Bull Run, when I'd already drafted the thing and we'd just been whipped badly. I sat alone with a piece of bread and some cheese, and I thought, if I do this, the border states might bolt. Kentucky might go. Missouri might go.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And you ate that bread anyway.
Abraham Lincoln
I ate that bread anyway. Wasn't much of a meal, but it was an honest one. I knew what was coming.
Martin Luther King Jr.
There is something about the solitary meal that clarifies. The night before I went to the Birmingham jail in sixty-three—not the first time, but the time when I knew I would write the letter, when I knew the white clergymen had called us extremists—I sat in a kitchen in someone's home. They gave me collard greens and cornbread. The family was there, but I felt alone with it.
Abraham Lincoln
Why alone?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Because they were looking to me to tell them it would be all right. And I did not know if it would be all right. I only knew it had to be done. The greens were good. I remember that. I remember thinking, this is what we are fighting for—that a man can grow greens and serve them at his own table without fear.
Abraham Lincoln
The small meal before the big thing. That's often how it comes. I remember the morning we left Springfield for Washington, before the inauguration. February, eighteen sixty-one. Cold as a well-digger's—well, it was cold. I had coffee and a biscuit at the station. Didn't finish the biscuit. I knew I might not see that town again.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And you did not.
Abraham Lincoln
I did not. They brought me back in a box.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Lincoln, do you think there is a particular meal that marks a man for such an end? I have wondered if the last breakfast is chosen or simply arrives.
Abraham Lincoln
I don't think we choose it, exactly. The morning of April fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five, I had breakfast with my son Robert. We talked about the war being over, about his wanting to practice law. I had coffee and a roll, I think. Maybe some eggs. It was ordinary. I didn't know it was the last one.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The last morning I woke in this life, I had breakfast at the Lorraine Motel. Room three-oh-six. I do not remember what I ate, and that troubles me now. I remember I was in good spirits. We were going to dinner that night at Reverend Kyles's home—he promised soul food. I was looking forward to it.
Abraham Lincoln
Mary and I were going to the theater. She was in fine spirits too. It's strange how the ordinary day can be the door you don't come back through. But we're not talking about last meals, are we? We're talking about the one before you do the hard thing on purpose.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Yes. The distinction matters. The meal before Memphis, I did not choose. The meal before Birmingham, I did.
Abraham Lincoln
So what makes a man able to eat it? That's the question, isn't it? I've known soldiers who vomited before battle. Good soldiers. Brave men. And I've known others who ate like farmhands before a harvest. I don't think appetite measures courage.
Martin Luther King Jr.
No, but perhaps it measures acceptance. When I could eat before the hard thing, it was because I had accepted that my life was not my own. It belonged to the movement. It belonged to those children who needed someone to walk in front.
Abraham Lincoln
That's well said. I felt something similar. My life belonged to the Union. After a certain point, I stopped thinking of it as mine to spend as I wished. That made the meals easier, in a way. You're just fueling the engine. The engine belongs to something larger.
Martin Luther King Jr.
But there is loneliness in that, Mr. Lincoln. Even when you are surrounded by people who love you—perhaps especially then—you are alone with the weight. You are eating food that they prepared, at a table they set, and you are thinking about what you must do that they cannot do for you.
Abraham Lincoln
Yes. Yes, that's exactly it. Mary would try to talk to me about other things. The boys, the house, some bit of gossip. And I would try to be present with her. But part of me was already in the next room, working the problem. She knew it. She always knew.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Coretta knew it too. She would watch me push the food around the plate and she would say, Martin, you have to eat. And I would eat, not because I wanted to, but because she needed to feel she was doing something for me. That is its own kind of love.
Abraham Lincoln
It is. And it's its own kind of weight, because you know they can't carry the thing you're carrying. They can give you food, they can give you comfort, but they can't take the decision from you. The meal before the hard thing—that's when you feel it most. You're chewing and swallowing and you're utterly alone with what's coming.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And yet we must eat. We must drink water. We must sleep, if we can. The body makes its demands even when the spirit is wrestling with principalities and powers.
Abraham Lincoln
The body keeps its own counsel. That's a fact. I remember once, before a debate with Douglas—Freeport, I think—I was so nervous I thought I might disgrace myself. But I ate a decent meal anyway, and by the time I stood to speak, my body had settled even though my mind was still racing. Sometimes the body knows what the mind doesn't: that you've done this before, that you can do it again.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That is the discipline of repetition. I preached hundreds of sermons before I preached in Birmingham. I marched in Albany, I marched in Selma. The body learns. The first meal before a hard thing is the hardest. The twentieth is merely difficult.
Abraham Lincoln
But it never becomes easy.
Martin Luther King Jr.
No sir, it does not. The day it becomes easy is the day you have lost something you cannot afford to lose. You must feel the weight. If you do not feel it, you are not carrying it—it is carrying you.
Abraham Lincoln
That's a preacher's precision right there. I like that. The weight must be felt or else you're just drifting. I used to tell people I felt like I was being dragged by events. But that wasn't quite true. I was choosing to be dragged—if that makes any sense. I could have let go. I didn't.
Martin Luther King Jr.
It makes entire sense. A man can release his grip on the plow. But then he is not a plowman. You held on. So did I. And the meal before the hard thing—that is when we tasted what holding on would cost.
Abraham Lincoln
Did you ever have a meal before the hard thing that you actually enjoyed? Where you tasted it, I mean. Where it was good.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Once. Before the March on Washington. August, nineteen sixty-three. I was staying with friends in Maryland the night before. They made fried chicken and potato salad. I remember thinking, this might be the last good meal before something breaks—either we succeed or we fail spectacularly. And I enjoyed that chicken, Mr. Lincoln. I tasted every bite. Because I realized that fear and joy can sit at the same table if you let them.
Abraham Lincoln
Fear and joy at the same table. I like that too. Maybe that's the trick of it. The meal before the hard thing doesn't have to be grim. It can be a chicken dinner with friends. It can be ordinary. Maybe it should be.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps that is the final lesson. That we do not honor the struggle by refusing comfort. We honor it by taking the comfort where we can, and then standing up from the table and walking into the fire anyway.
Abraham Lincoln
Well, Reverend, if I'd known that at twenty-five, I might've saved myself considerable indigestion. But I suppose we learn by eating badly first.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And by getting up from those bad meals and doing the work regardless. That is the testimony. Not that we were unafraid. But that we ate the bread, drank the water, and went forward.
Abraham Lincoln
Amen to that. Though I still say a joke helps the digestion.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Lincoln, your jokes were sermons in disguise. I have read them. You preached the gospel of common sense.
Abraham Lincoln
And you preached the gospel of the beloved community. I think we both knew: the meal before the mountain is where you decide if you mean what you've been saying. Everything after that is just keeping your word.