Lewis is a Connection to King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech
Updated on 8/28/08 at 9:40
DENVER— After a musical interlude, the crowd fell silent just before 5pm MDT when Congressman John Lewis started speaking. Lewis began by saying that he was present 45 years ago to the day when Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the 1963 March on Washington. His presence connects us all to that history, and even those of us in the press corps have been listening pretty intently. The thought occurred to me that very few others of the 20,000 or so people here—Invesco Field is just starting to fill up—were at that place. Very few elected officials or politicians participated in the March on Washington. President Kennedy was conspicuously away from Washington that weekend. Only a handful of members of Congress attended. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, did not attend; Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers did. Forty-five years have passed, and probably half of the people who participated in the March are no longer alive. Today it is unthinkable not to celebrate a March that almost no one prominent in public life wished to be associated with back then.
On the floor at Invesco I saw Jesse Jackson, Sr., who did not speak at this convention, as he has at every convention starting in 1984. But Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. did speak. I approached Jackson and he recognized me. I asked for his reflections. I'll try to transcribe his words as best I can: "I was at both of them, the march on Washington in 1963 and this convention. [The] 1963 [event] was in a war zone. This is a celebration. Kennedy surrounded the march with the National Guard. There was only a single bathroom, a single public toilet in the city. It was only a month from the Birmingham bombings. That is what makes today's event more marvelous. This is a better America. In 1963 King spoke, in 2008 Barack is being nominated. That is America growing. This is a better America." I asked him how many who were at the 1963 march were here tonight; he agreed that there weren't very many.
Both Lewis's speech and Jackson's words sent chills down my neck. How we've changed!
Tags: speeches | Democratic National Convention | Martin Luther King Jr. | Jesse Jackson
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Not true
"President Kennedy was conspicuously away from Washington that weekend."
No, he wasn't. He watched King's address on television in the White House living quarters, then met with King and the rest of the major civil rights leadership in the Oval Office afterward. (He did not meet with them beforehand, fearing political fallout had the event erupted in violence - a distinct possibility.)
MLK as a Republican
Let's remember a couple of things. For years the Democratic Party was, in some regards, the conservative one. Even FDR didn't dare ruffle the Dixiecrat or other conservative Democrat feathers. But ruffle they finally did, first under Truman and then Kennedy, finally Johnson with the Civil Rights legislation. The Democrat conservatives left in a massive huff, became Republicans in a major flip-flop. MLK (not to mention Teddy Roosevelt or Lincoln) would not recognize the current Republican platform, rhetoric, or candidates as their own. At 74 and with a long memory, I am an ex-Republican for the above reason.
MLK Was A Republican
Yes and the Republicans were the ones who got the civil rights acts of 1963 and 64 passed against STRONG Democrat opposition.
There are more than 60 billboards up in Denver reminding the Democrats in Denver that MLK was a Republican.
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