Washington, D.C. — Thousands of people turned out at the National Mall on Sunday to celebrate the new memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to hear from a series of speakers that included civil rights luminaries, preachers, movie stars and the president of the United States.
In many ways, the tribute to King also served as a political platform for the Obama administration and its supporters, who used the event to advance issues that ranged from affordable health care to union rights, all causes they said King embraced or would have embraced and that are imperiled by the political polarities of the day.
Even if the speakers didn’t make the event political, the crowd would have done so. Indeed, as the Battle Hymn of the Republic was being sung, the crowd all began to chant “four more years” when images of the first family strolling near the new MLK memorial appeared on the two Jumbotrons erected on both sides of the stage at West Potomac Park.
President Obama — who spoke at the base of the MLK memorial and away from the main stage — said the MLK memorial is not just a monument to pay tribute to King as an individual, but to all of the people, including the unsung heroes, who comprised the civil rights movement that King led. The president said the monument also serves as a reminder of the work that has yet to be done.
“Our work is not done,” Obama said. “So on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles.
“Let us remember that change has never been quick,” Obama said, seemingly comparing his own travails as a President who is trying to revive a faltering economy and bring about health care reform to the struggles of King.
He noted that it took a decade “before the moral guidance of Brown v. Board of Education was translated into the enforcement measures of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but those 10 long years did not lead Dr. King to give up.”
