Today Hillary Clinton implied that Barack Obama overrated the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, saying that "Dr. King"s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act...It took a president to get it done." This is actually as serious a distortion of recent American history as any presidential candidate has uttered in the memory of this writer, who lived through and vividly remembers those events. Had there been no civil rights movement, no demonstrations and boycotts and protests -- driving up the cost of segregation and destroying the legitimacy of legalized racial subordination in America -- the conscience of the nation and the nationwide demand for change would never have supplied President Johnson with the political support he needed to drive through civil rights legislation.
The real history of that movement fully supports Senator Obama's reason for citing it: The people who powered that movement forward, who marched and were beaten and marched again, were the decisive force for change. Had they not acted, had they not put their lives on the line, and had they not won the hearts and minds of most Americans, no president would have been able to win congressional approval of such significant changes in our laws, helping to assure equal rights for all Americans. Senator Clinton either did not know what she was talking about, or, what is more likely, instinctively overemphasized what politicians in Washington can do to execute change. As Senator Obama has said, if the people do not rise up and demand change, presidents and politicians are not likely to embrace it.
posted 01/08/2008 at 19:47:08
The real history of that movement fully supports Senator Obama's reason for citing it: The people who powered that movement forward, who marched and were beaten and marched again, were the decisive force for change. Had they not acted, had they not put their lives on the line, and had they not won the hearts and minds of most Americans, no president would have been able to win congressional approval of such significant changes in our laws, helping to assure equal rights for all Americans. Senator Clinton either did not know what she was talking about, or, what is more likely, instinctively overemphasized what politicians in Washington can do to execute change. As Senator Obama has said, if the people do not rise up and demand change, presidents and politicians are not likely to embrace it.
posted 01/08/2008 at 19:47:08
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