There is still a question about whether John McCain was booed in Memphis, but for the three remaining major candidates for president, today was a day to remember Dr. Martin Luther King. Canada's National Post reported it this way:
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- They came to pay tribute, but also to make amends.
Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton, two U.S. presidential candidates struggling for support among African-American voters, on Friday marked the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination with messages of praise, humility and contrition.
Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, laid a wreath at the Lorraine Motel, the site of King's death on April 4, 1968, and now home to the National Civil Rights Museum.
"Martin Luther King today is honoured by the world, in such a way that it is easy to forget he once knew the scorn of the world," said Mr. McCain, who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam when the civil rights leader was killed.
Mr. McCain earned the disdain of many African-American voters 25 years ago when, as a freshman member of Congress, he voted against making King's birthday a national holiday.
Addressing a crowd gathered outside the Lorraine Motel, Mr. McCain admitted his decision was a slight against King's memory and admitted he did not know enough about the civil rights leader's life and legacy.
"We can be slow to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself, long ago," said Mr. McCain, whose remarks were met with boos and jeers from the crowd.
"I was wrong and eventually realized that . . . We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing."
His remarks came as thousands huddled under umbrellas in heavy rain for daylong ceremonies honouring King, who led efforts by African-Americans to end racial segregation in the 1960s, and championed peaceful protest.
Civil rights leaders including Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, a former aide to King, who was with him on the evening he was killed, led a march through Memphis that ended with a candlelight vigil at the Lorraine Motel.
Mr. Jackson said Mr. McCain's praise of King was "better late than never."
Shortly after the Republican candidate's visit to the site of King's death, Ms. Clinton made her own appearance, touring the room where King stayed and walking onto the motel balcony where he was killed by a sniper's bullet.
Ms. Clinton's support among black Democrats has plummeted during her battle for the party's presidential nomination against Barack Obama. She angered many civil rights leaders in January by appearing to diminish King's role in the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation.
"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done," Ms. Clinton said, while campaigning ahead of the New Hampshire primary.
While Ms. Clinton insisted she meant no slight against King, many African-American leaders believed it was part of a broader effort within her campaign to diminish Obama's chances as a black man to become president.
Clinton made no reference to the controversy during a separate, lower-profile visit to the Mason Temple church, where King delivered his ‘I've been to the mountaintop' speech on the eve of his assassination.
Speaking to a group of black preachers in the church's basement, Ms. Clinton recalled briefly meeting King when she was a teenager in Chicago, a moment, she said had a "profound and lasting impact" on her life.
When King was killed, Ms. Clinton recalled hurling her book bag across her college dorm room in anger.
"It felt like everything had been shattered, like we would never be able to put the pieces together again," she said.
Can we get a videotape of that book throwing incident? (Ahem)
The panel on MSNBC's David Gregory Show (I'm sure it has another name, but it escapes me) disputed the McCain booing, with both Michael Smerconish (of Phily talk radio) and Eugene Robinson of the WaPo saying it sounded more like eruptions of forgiveness. Or boos ... whichever floats our boat...
Barack Obama made his tributary remarks in Fort Wayne, Indiana (here's the Youtube,) ceding Memphis to his competitors, but making news of his own, as WaPo's The Trail reports:
By Alec MacGillis
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Had Barack Obama attended a service today in Memphis commemorating the 40th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, it would likely have inspired further comparisons between the two men, the slain civil rights leader and the rookie senator who has become the first truly viable African American contender for the presidency.
But Obama decided he needed to keep an earlier commitment to appear at a Democratic Party event in North Dakota this evening, even if it meant leaving the spotlight in Memphis to Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
Instead, he chose to spend the first part of the anniversary day here in Indiana, which has allowed him to evoke a second figure from the 1960s: Bobby Kennedy.
Kennedy was campaigning in Indianapolis when he learned of King's assassination, and he proceeded to relay the news to a crowd of voters in a black neighborhood, urging them, in one of the more notable pieces of spontaneous American political oratory, not to betray King's ideals by allowing their grief and anger to flow into violence.
By Alec MacGillis
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Had Barack Obama attended a service today in Memphis commemorating the 40th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, it would likely have inspired further comparisons between the two men, the slain civil rights leader and the rookie senator who has become the first truly viable African American contender for the presidency.
But Obama decided he needed to keep an earlier commitment to appear at a Democratic Party event in North Dakota this evening, even if it meant leaving the spotlight in Memphis to Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
Instead, he chose to spend the first part of the anniversary day here in Indiana, which has allowed him to evoke a second figure from the 1960s: Bobby Kennedy.
Kennedy was campaigning in Indianapolis when he learned of King's assassination, and he proceeded to relay the news to a crowd of voters in a black neighborhood, urging them, in one of the more notable pieces of spontaneous American political oratory, not to betray King's ideals by allowing their grief and anger to flow into violence.
By Alec MacGillis
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- Had Barack Obama attended a service today in Memphis commemorating the 40th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, it would likely have inspired further comparisons between the two men, the slain civil rights leader and the rookie senator who has become the first truly viable African American contender for the presidency.
But Obama decided he needed to keep an earlier commitment to appear at a Democratic Party event in North Dakota this evening, even if it meant leaving the spotlight in Memphis to Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
Instead, he chose to spend the first part of the anniversary day here in Indiana, which has allowed him to evoke a second figure from the 1960s: Bobby Kennedy.
Kennedy was campaigning in Indianapolis when he learned of King's assassination, and he proceeded to relay the news to a crowd of voters in a black neighborhood, urging them, in one of the more notable pieces of spontaneous American political oratory, not to betray King's ideals by allowing their grief and anger to flow into violence.
Obama clearly was seeking to cast himself as the heir to both men as he delivered a roughly 10-minute prelude to a town hall meeting at a high school gym here packed with a racially mixed crowd of about 2,800. While focusing on King, he also recalled Kennedy's ability to serve as a conduit to his black audience that day. "As the shock turned toward anger, Kennedy reminded them of Dr. King's compassion, and his love. And on a night when cities across the nation were alight with violence, all was quiet in Indianapolis," Obama said.
In his remarks on King, Obama reminded his audience that King had been concerned not just with racial justice but with economic justice, and that he had been in Memphis to show solidarity for striking sanitation workers. "It was a struggle ... for the opportunity that should be available to people of all races and all walks of life," Obama said. "Because Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic justice and the struggle for racial justice were really one -- that each was part of a larger struggle 'for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.' So long as Americans were trapped in poverty, so long as they were being denied the wages, benefits, and fair treatment they deserved -- so long as opportunity was being opened to some but not all -- the dream that he spoke of would remain out of reach." ...
Economic message ... check.Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Martin Luther King, presidential candidates |
