Abstract
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream!” Martin Luther King Jr. leavened much of his oratory with this famous quotation from the prophet Amos (5:24). Easily King’s favorite biblical verse from either testament, it recurs throughout his sermons, speeches, interviews, magazine articles, and books. He used it in his address at the Holt Street Baptist Church on December 5, 1955, the crucial first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He used it in his last public address on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated in Memphis. King drew upon this quotation for its powerful life-affirming imagery, for its authoritative voice, for its grounding deep in our Judeo-Christian ethical tradition. The frequency with which King quoted this verse is arguably the major reason it is so familiar to us today.