With tens of thousands of slightly damp, yet hopeful people looking on, President Barack Obama stood where Martin Luther King Jr. had on the Lincoln Memorial fifty years ago to mark the anniversary of the March on Washington.
Obama began his speech by quoting the Declaration of Independence.
In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise, those truths remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands, from every corner of our country -- men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. Across the land, congregations sent them off with food and with prayer. In the middle of the night, entire blocks of Harlem came out to wish them well.With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn't always sit where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked, or walked. They were seamstresses, and steelworkers, and students, and teachers, maids and pullman porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors.
And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation's capital, under the shadow of the great emancipator, to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress and to awaken America's long-slumbering conscience.
We rightly and best remember Dr. King's soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.
But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV.
The president also mentioned Anacostia, the Ward 8 neighborhood, in his speech.
And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person. With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them. (Applause.) With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.
Former President Bill Clinton said, "The choice remains as it was on that distant summer day 50 years ago: cooperate and thrive or fight with each other and fall behind."
Former President Jimmy Carter used the refrain "I think we know how Dr. King would have reacted" to describe unfair many situations, including the lack of voting rights for residents of D.C.
This pleased many D.C. politicians.
Rep. John Lewis, the only surviving speaker from the original March, said the country still has "a great distance to go."
Media mogul Oprah Winfrey told the crowd, "As we, the people, continue to honor the dream of a man and a movement, we can be inspired, and we too can be courageous by continuing to walk in the footsteps in the path that he forged."
modesto st louis weather guinea bissau google stock google stock china gdp dont trust the b in apartment 23
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন