Sept. 2, 2013

President Obama Challenges America:  ‘Keep Marching’
By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Standing in the very spot where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood 50 years before, President Barack Obama – America’s first Black President, challenged the nation to take a lesson from the past and keep marching.

“Because they kept marching, America changed.  Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed.  Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed.  Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed,” he said to enthusiastic applause.

It was the “Let Freedom Ring” Ceremony, commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The drizzly Aug. 28 day did not deter thousands from coming to witness the event. The crowd of people lined the mall from the Lincoln Memorial, where King spoke in 1963, around the Tidal Basin and almost back to the Washington Monument.  In fact, hundreds left the event after standing in line for hours due to a bottleneck at security gates for the event that was billed as “free and open” to the public.

But for the thousands that remained, chanting and cheering from what seemed like miles away, President Obama exhorted them to march in a new way.

“That tireless teacher who gets to class early and stays late and dips into her own pocket to buy supplies because she believes that every child is her charge  - she’s marching. That successful businessman who doesn't have to but pays his workers a fair wage and then offers a shot to a man, maybe an ex-con who is down on his luck - he’s marching.   

“The mother who pours her love into her daughter so that she grows up with the confidence to walk through the same door as anybody’s son - she’s marching.   The father who realizes the most important job he’ll ever have is raising his boy right, even if he didn't have a father - especially if he didn't have a father at home - he’s marching.  The battle-scarred veterans who devote themselves not only to helping their fellow warriors stand again, and walk again, and run again, but to keep serving their country when they come home - they are marching,” he said to applause.  

Facing new inequities in America, President Obama did not shy away from the realities of the moment.

“Inequality has steadily risen over the decades.  Upward mobility has become harder.  In too many communities across this country, in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence,” he said.

“Yes, there have been examples of success within Black America that would have been unimaginable a half century ago…But, as has already been noted, Black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as White unemployment, Latino unemployment close behind.  The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it's grown.  And as President Clinton indicated, the position of all working Americans, regardless of color, has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.”

Three presidents – Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter – addressed the crowd, in addition to luminaries that included Oprah Winfrey, Martin Luther King III, the Rev. Bernice King and Congressman John Lewis.

With the Trayvon Martin case still heavy on the minds of justice-seekers, Clinton stressed that Dr. King, “urged the victims of racial violence to meet White Americans with an outstretched hand; not a clinched fist. And in so doing, proved the redeeming power of unearned suffering.”

President Carter drew applause from the crowd when he pointed to the inequities of the criminal justice system. “There are more than 835,000 African-American men in prison, five times as many as when I left office. And with one third of all African-American males being destined to be in prison in our lifetime, there is a tremendous agenda ahead of us,” Carter said.

Rev. Bernice King, with the intense cadence of her father, delivered a fiery speech, also outlining the gross injustices of 2013.

“We come once again to let freedom ring. Because if freedom stops ringing, then the sound will disappear and the atmosphere will be charged with something else,” she said. “We are still crippled by practices and policies steeped in racial pride, hatred and hostility, some of which have us standing our ground rather than finding common ground. We are still chained by economic disparity, income and class inequality and conditions of poverty for many of God’s children around this nation and the world. We are still bound by civil unrest and apparent social biases in a world that often times degenerates into violence and destruction; especially against women and children. We are at this landing, and now we must break the cycle,” she said. “The Profit King spoke the vision. He made it plain. And we must run with it in this generation.”

The chiming of a bell at exactly 3 p.m. was intended to mark the moment that Dr. King proclaimed the words, "Let Freedom Ring!...From Every Mountain Side, Let Freedom Ring!"

President Obama, the final speaker, encouraged the nation that if they continue to march – not just in the streets, but in the ways he outlined – change will be inevitable.

“America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there.  Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up.  That’s how a movement happens.  That’s how history bends.  That's how when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we’re marching,” he said. “We might not face the same dangers of 1963, but the fierce urgency of now remains. We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling procession of that day so long ago - no one can match King’s brilliance - but the same flame that lit the heart of all who are willing to take a first step for justice, I know that flame remains.”