Nov. 25, 2013

Medal of Freedom Honoree: Blacks that Elected Obama Must Remain Unified
By Hazel Trice Edney

President Barack Obama prepares to bestow the Presidential Medals of Freedom upon 16 American leaders. PHOTO: The White House

Civil rights leader Rev. C. T. Vivian receives Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. PHOTO: White House

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey receives Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. PHOTO: White House

(TriceEdneyWire.com)–Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rev. Cordy Tindell “C. T.” Vivian, a foot soldier for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., says the greatest mistake that Black leaders and organizations can now make is to stray away from the unified strategy that elected President Barack Obama.

“The best strategy for today is the one that’s been already working,” Vivian said in an exclusive interview with the Trice Edney News Wire. “Not demanding unity from their followers” is the greatest mistake Black leaders and organizations can now make.

The stately 89-year-old, who now serves as interim president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says the consistency, passion and strategic political vote demonstrated by Dr. King is the strategy that has served as a blueprint for the modern day civil rights movement; including the election and re-election of the first Black president with a more than 90 percent Black vote in 2008 and 2012.

“What we had in Martin King was a method, a means and a strategy. And that’s what kept us together. We all knew what we were fighting for,” Vivian said in the telephone interview the day after the White House Ceremony.

He says leaders must now focus on the 2014 mid-term elections in which the entire U. S. House and part of the Senate (33 seats) will be up for re-election. With an acrimonious partisanship now ruling Congress, the Nov. 4 election will be a battle for a political majority.

“People must get the word out on the telephone, sororities, etcetera and to be active…Not only for them to go to the polls, but to make certain that every Black person they know shows you their voter registration card and have us get in a habit of challenging every friend we got by themselves or in a group and show the card…And make certain they go to the polls,” Vivian said.

Vivian was among 16 recipients of the Medal of Freedom, first bestowed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The revered Bayard Rustin, also a foot soldier for King, credited for having organized the March on Washington, was also honored posthumously. Baseball great Ernie “Mr. Cub” Banks and media mogul Oprah Winfrey were two other African-Americans honored.

Other honorees were nationally renowned newsman Ben Bradlee; Clinton Foundation founder former President Bill Clinton; World War II veteran the late U. S. Sen. Daniel Inouye; pioneering psychologist Daniel Kahneman; statesman and Rhodes scholar Sen. Richard Lugar; country music legend Loretta Lynn; visionary chemist and environmental scientist Mario Molina; first female astronaut the late Sally Ride; celebrated jazz trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval; champion basketball coach Dean Smith; renowned writer and women’s activist Gloria Steinem and highly respected appellate Judge Patricia Wald.

“These are the men and women who in their extraordinary lives remind us all of the beauty of the human spirit, the values that define us as Americans, the potential that lives inside of all of us,” said President Obama to the standing-room-only crowd in the East Room.

The guest list read like a who’s who in Black America. It included baseball legend Hank Aaron; children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman; legendary vocalist Aretha Franklin; the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.; U. S. Rep. John Lewis; and civil rights icon Rev. Joseph Lowery.

“Time and again, Reverend Vivian was among the first to be in the action,” President Obama said. “In 1947, joining a sit-in to integrate an Illinois restaurant; one of the first Freedom Riders; in Selma, on the courthouse steps to register Blacks to vote, for which he was beaten, bloodied and jailed.  Rosa Parks said of him, ‘Even after things had supposedly been taken care of and we had our rights, he was still out there, inspiring the next generation, including me,’ helping kids go to college with a program that would become Upward Bound. And at 89 years old, Reverend Vivian is still out there, still in the action, pushing us closer to our founding ideals.”

Among the greatest ideals of all, Rev. Vivian says, is the willingness to give all for the cause of freedom, justice and equality – another principle illustrated by Dr. King.

“When we’re willing to die for something, when we’re willing to take it seriously and when we’re united and when we’re not trying to defeat each other, and when we really are committed to all of us instead of  just a few of us we will do it we can do it. We’ve proven that,” he said. “And then we go from there to what is possible in the coming period.”