With the constant comparisons between “the dreamer,” Dr. Martin Luther King and President-Elect Barack Obama, it is almost inevitable that even both great men’s fortunes would continue to be tied to to each other. In his recent commentary, former personal counsel, adviser, draft speech writer and close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Clarence B. Jones examines this phenomenon in his insightful piece.
Jones assertion is that Obama has tried to minimize his race to attract broad appeal at the expense of lions of the civil rights generation. While their are obvious contrasts between Obama and King, Jones feels if the President-elect has not gone far enough to make that connection and in his estimation that has been a mistake.
“January 15th, 2009 will mark what would have been the 80th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. On January 19th we commemorate Dr. King’s birthday as a national holiday. The following day, “January 20th, a country that, within living memory, denied some black citizens the right to vote will inaugurate its first black president. A man with a funny name and African blood will stand where 43 white men have stood before him and take the oath of office.”
August 28th, 2008 in Denver, Colorado, Senator Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination as its candidate for president of the United States. His acceptance speech was 40 years to the day of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. At the time I thought it would have been appropriate for Senator Obama, in his speech to the Democratic Party National Convention, to specifically acknowledge the historic coincidence of his nomination on the 40th Anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream.”
Presumably, Senator Obama, his advisors and speech writers concluded that a passing reference to “a preacher from Georgia” 40 years ago in the acceptance speech was sufficient acknowledgment of the coincidence of both his and Dr. King’s historic address to the “March On Washington” on the same date, August 28th, 1963.
Respectfully, I’d suggest that was a mistake.
Now that Obama has become America’s first African-American president elect, I hope that in his inaugural address, the day following our national holiday commemorating Dr. King’s birthday, he will make specific reference to the confluence of these two historic events in our nation’s capital.
Recently I spent a week in Paris as the guest of the French organization, SOS Racisme. My invitation was part of Paris’s celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Ninth World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates and commemoration of the legacy of Dr. King, 40 years after his death.
Nobel Laureates F. W. de Klerk of South Africa (1993 joint recipient with Nelson Mandela), David Hume of Northern Ireland, Ingrid Betancourt (former presidential candidate in Columbia, and a prisoner of the FARC guerillas for several years), and Lech Walesa of Poland gathered to bestow their annual “Peace Award” on Bono, the Irish musician and political activist. (Mikhail Gorbachev was absent because of medical reasons.) First Lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy and Bertrand Delanoe, Mayor of Paris were also present.
The questions most asked of me during the Conference were:
Is Barack Obama another Martin Luther King, Jr?
What would Dr. King say about the election of Obama?
Is the election of Obama as the first African-American president of the United States mean that Dr. King’s dream has been fulfilled?
Did I ever think an African-American would become president of the United States 40 years after the death of Dr. King?
Does Obama’s election indicate that racism for all practical purposes no longer exist in America?
Will Obama’s election have any impact upon the number of African-American men incarcerated of the high percentage of out of wedlock births within the African-American community?
Having witnessed history first-hand with Dr. King and being fortunate to be one of his few advisors to live to witness the history-in-the-making that is the Obama presidency, I uniquely bridge a gap. I have both the honor and the responsibility to try and answer the overarching question: What would Martin Luther King, Jr. say about Senator Barack Obama’s election as President of the United States?
Dr. King had an abiding belief in the basic goodness, fairness and decency of America. He never abandoned his confidence that a majority of Americans would ultimately embrace the precepts of our Declaration of Independence: That all persons are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
He never doubted or lost faith in his religion, nor the righteousness of God. Martin would probably smile and say “Amen” as he listened to Senator Obama say, more than once, during the closing weeks of his presidential campaign that we have a “righteous wind at our back, but we can’t slow down now.”
To read the rest of Jones’ commentary, click here.
We are the dream now. I Have A Dream that Obama in not about race.This is what the Presidential election made a lot of people think about on a Global Scale. What is change? And what will have to Change? And how will we change it. thes 2 newblog reflex this.
http://www.zazzle.com/drop_it_down_shirt-235637399282915850
CNN
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-147274
I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…