Convenient Heroes

“Now that he is safely dead

Let us praise him,

build monuments to his glory,

sing hosannas to his name.

Dead men make such convenient heroes:

They 
cannot rise 
to challenge the images

we would fashion from their lives.

And besides,

it is easier to build monuments

than to (build) a better world.”

Carl Wendell Hines,

written after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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