FBI Director Christopher Wray in Birmingham for Civil Rights Conference

fbi.gov FBI Director Christopher Wray summoned the words of Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech Monday in Birmingham, Alabama encouraging Civil Rights activists and law enforcement leaders to forge ahead in their fight for justice despite the persistence of violent, bias-motivated hate crimes. Speaking from the pulpit of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham—where four young girls were killed in a bombing in 1963 that shocked the nation and galvanized support for the Civil Rights Movement—Wray referenced a speech Dr. King delivered in 1965 to a weary audience. It was 18 days after Bloody Sunday, and they had just marched 54 miles from the city of Selma. The minister famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Wray spoke at the historic church about the FBI’s role and history investigating hate crimes on the first day of the Birmingham Civil Rights Conference in Alabama. “A lot of people have used [King’s quote] to talk about how Civil Rights causes have slowly improved,” Wray said. “He was not saying justice is inevitable. He was saying the long arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. And it does...