The question of whether hope still carries democratic power even as the nation feels locked in distrust and exhaustion was a central theme last week during The King Center’s Beloved Community Global Summit.
Held at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights on Jan. 15, speakers challenged the notion that hope is naive or passive in times of deep national division. They pointed to recurring patterns in U.S. history, noting that periods of government backlash have often followed major democratic expansions — from the abolition of slavery to the fight for voting rights.
“There’s a pattern to oppression,” said Tanya Washington, a professor of Children’s Constitutional Rights at Georgia State University College of Law. “There’s a pattern to resistance. There’s a pattern to transformation.”
“What we are experiencing is not new,” she continued. “Nor is the resistance. Nor is the thing that we cannot see that will come after this, and that’s what gives me hope.”
An October 2025 report published by Syracuse University Today states that the U.S. is more divided than at any point since the Civil War.
It cited a Pew Research poll showing that in 2022, 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats “viewed the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans — up dramatically from 47 percent and 35 percent in 2016.”
At the Atlanta summit, Liba Beyer, a human rights defender and adjunct professor at Columbia University, described hopelessness as an intentional outcome of efforts to dismantle hard-won rights. Beyer is curator of the “Everyone. Everywhere: Global Human Rights” gallery at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.
She and Tammy Greer, a clinical assistant professor at Georgia State University, said that the current erosion of legal protections is designed not only to shift policy, but to exhaust people emotionally — leaving them feeling defeated and giving up hope.
“The people who are sewing divisiveness are actually the most hopeful people; they’re just taking it away from you,” Greer said. “They know civics. They understand structure and the function of government very well. And they are clear that “We the people” are the most important institution in this republic. Part of their strategy is to create the distraction.”
Business leader John Hope Bryant, founder and CEO of the financial literacy nonprofit Operation Hope, pointed to a pattern of federal government reversals starting with the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, when President Andrew Johnson withdrew the promise of 40 acres and a mule for formerly enslaved people. Bryant drew parallels to resistance following the civil rights movement, the election of President Barack Obama, and the racial reckoning of the Black community sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
Bryant said that every expansion of democracy has been met with a reaction.
“Don’t be afraid of this moment,” he said.
The business and academic leaders challenged the audience to create conversation and open communication.
They encouraged the crowd to lean into dialogue and shared values as a counter to polarization. Rather than focusing on what they oppose, Beyer encouraged people to lead with what they stand for.
“When you are trying to persuade people, values unite people, issues divide people,” she said.
“Being here shows you have hope,” Beyer told the audience. “Hope fuels bravery.”
The collective message was not that the current moment is easy, but that it is familiar. The speakers said that hope endures not as a feeling, but as a decision to stay engaged when retreat feels tempting — a principle that they said is at the heart of Martin Luther King Jr.’s work.
“No one is coming to save us. ‘We the people’ are the ones we are waiting for,” Washington said. “We have to figure this out. Dr. King’s work wasn’t one person. It was a movement of people who decided that they were going to better their lives, their circumstances and that of their communities.”
