When the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its stark appraisal of the endurance of racism in U.S. society with the pastoral letter “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love” in November 2018, the national reckoning with race that would ignite in the wake of the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

Almost everyone familiar with the life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knows the value that the civil rights leader put on living a long life. The phrase “longevity has its place” is now enshrined within his last speech, given the night before King’s murder in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4,1968.