King opens his address to Morehouse graduates — his own alma mater — with the parable of Rip Van Winkle. Most people remember that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years, King says, but what they miss is what happened while he slept: a revolution. When Rip went up the mountain, there was a picture of King George III on the wall of the inn; when he came down, it was George Washington. He had slept through a revolution. King uses this story to frame the central challenge for the Class of 1959: the world is undergoing a revolution in race relations, in science, in technology, in international affairs, and the danger is not that you will fail — it's that you will sleep through it. Remaining awake, staying alert to the moral demands of the moment, is the hardest and most important thing a Morehouse man can do.