The real sting here lies in what King strips away: the comfortable assumption that history simply bends toward fairness on its own, that we can coast. He's rejecting the notion that time itself is a moral force—instead, he insists the world stays broken unless particular people pay particular prices for change. When we see a workplace finally adopt fair hiring practices or a school finally integrate, we rarely ask whose lunch was skipped, whose reputation was damaged, whose sleepless nights made it possible, yet King forces us to acknowledge that machinery of justice doesn't run on good intentions alone.