On Aug. 26, 2023, a man opened fire at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida , killing three people before taking his own life.

On Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Those events are separated by 700 miles and six decades. They are joined by the evil of racial hatred that King battled and that motivated last Saturday’s murderer. Both comprise distinct points in America’s history regarding race, slavery, and segregation. Together, they show our story on this matter as not linear, but one punctuated both by triumph and tragedy.

In response, we should focus on another way Saturday’s evil and 1963’s moment of hope differ. They present deeply contrasting visions of our country.

The Jacksonville murderer left behind manifestos that gave no ambiguity about what he thought America should be. He targeted black men and women because he believed in the superiority of white people. The man killed because, more than simply believing himself superior, he also despised his fellow human beings based on their skin color. He treated them as beings not worthy of existence, much less the respect of common citizenship. He had imbibed a long-standing lie that America was created by and existed for only the white race.

King’s famous address offered a far different view of our country. He admitted the existence of men such as last Saturday’s killer, both then and back deep into American history. He did not flinch to articulate the pain and injustice perpetrated against African Americans since colonial days. A trail of evils stained our past and remains with us in certain respects today.

But he firmly held that those men did not define America. Instead, he called for our country, his country, to “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” That creed, that statement of belief, was summarized in the famous lines of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

We have not perfectly followed this belief, either as a nation or as individuals. Yet it has encouraged us and called us to account across the centuries.

In his own call to account, King also compared the Declaration’s assertion of equality to a “promissory note,” wherein we dedicated ourselves to fulfilling in practice what we claimed true in principle. Ending legalized racial segregation and battling its underlying views were ways to realize the Declaration’s own vision. In other words, King did not ask America to reject itself, to become something other than itself. He demanded we act in line with our own beliefs. He demanded a truer America and, thus, a better one.

The killer in Jacksonville rejected this creed. In doing so, he rejected his country. He rejected his fellow Americans. He proved not the superiority of a race but the depravity possible in a human heart.

We, of course, should reject the killer’s ideology as false and wicked. But we must also reject it as having a legitimate claim to American principles.

Some, in the wake of Saturday’s tragedy, have tried to link the murderer’s motivations with that of the rest of the country. They have tried to paint King’s Dream as a nightmare and impossibility, and demanded that the institutions meant to preserve and further America’s values be torn down instead.

We should not go down that false path, either. We do not need to reject America to reject the Jacksonville killer.

King exhorted his listeners, “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.” That does not mean that the victims’ families, their community, and the country as a whole should neglect to mourn. But our mourning must lead to rededication, not rejection. We must battle anew to affirm our national creed, to realize our promissory note of human equality.

Adam Carrington is an assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College.