"One of the things I liked about him was that he didn’t pretend to be a great powerful know-it-all. I remember him discussing openly his gloom, depression, his fears, admitting that he didn’t know what the next step was. He would then say:

'Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.'"

This recollection of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s wisdom comes from Marian Wright Edelman via a 1991 essay she published in "Mother Jones” magazine, in which she described listening to Dr. King’s orations in the chapel at Spelman College when she was a young lawyer.

Thanks be to you, wonderful God, for speaking to us through your children, our leaders, Marian Wright Edelman and Martin Luther King.

1991 May-June, Mother Jones, Volume 16, Number 31, Kids First! by Marian Wright Edelman, page 77.