That's very nice, however, there is only one problem with it: It's not a King quote. Whenever King used the phrase, he was actually echoing another speaker before him who he really admired. That speaker was the Massachusetts minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, he said in 1853, "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice."
The quote has often been attributed to King, however it seems that Obama, his biographer David Remnick, and none of the White House decorators bothered to look into its historic origins, or even do a quick search on Wikipedia, where an entry is listed describing Parker as the original author of the phrase.
When asked about it, White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton on Saturday stood by the quote on the rug, noting that Martin Luther King Jr. did utter precisely the same words on September 2, 1957. Burton said that Parker's quote is slightly different. All the same, the quote's original author is still Parker. It's debatable whether or not the rug should be changed, because King did indeed state what it says, no matter who said it first.
That's not the only quote that has origins pointing toward Theodore Parker. Another quote woven into the rug, from Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address says, "government of the people, by the people and for the people."
Continue reading on the next page.
[caption id="attachment_8352" align="aligncenter" width="540" caption="You Can See Part of the Quote Here, Official White House Photo by Pete Souza"]
[/caption]In 1850, Parker wrote, "A democracy -- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people."
We will just have to wait and see if the rug stays or if it will be changed...
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