History in the making
John Birchall
02 Nov 2008
As the United States of America prepare to vote in their presidential elections, John Birchall considers the implications of electing Barack Obama.
Barack Obama for president?
1. We could be about to witness a significant change in how America perceives itself and how others view the most powerful nation on earth.
2. You may be tiring of the constant coverage but if we just look at a few events in the recent history of the US it may help you to appreciate why what may happen in the next 48 hours will be so important to so many people.
3. First Presidential Debate – Mississippi – founded in 1848 for the education of white men. 1962 James Meredith applied, he was African American – 3 died, many hundreds injured as students, staff and a number of armed local people tried to stop him attending classes and amongst these were people carrying banners saying ‘ no niggers here’.
4. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson managed to get the Civil Rights Act passed. This outlawed racial segregation and introduced equal opportunities. As Johnson said’ it would lose the Democrats the south for two generations’ and they will probably hold very few States on Tuesday that are in the south.
5. 1968 – Olympics, Mexico and Tommy Smith’s gloved hand held in a salute – reminded the world that racial segregation was still a real part of the lives of millions.
6. Remember the US could say little about South Africa and apartheid
7. These events and my first classes in International Relations led to me and others to work in Africa for two years in the UK version of Peace Corps. I knew little of slavery and almost nothing of colonialism.
8. Obama is a true African American and may lack experience but his rhetoric has engaged many in America who had never even contemplated being involved in politics and had probably never voted. He has also connected with the young, first time voter.
9. He holds out considerable hope and maybe 45 years after Martin Luther King led the March to Freedom his words may finally begin to become a reality.
10. Let’s end by going back to August 28th – sticky afternoon as 600,000 people stood beneath Lincoln’s Memorial in Washington. King spoke for over 40 minutes. He repeated some of what he had said in Detroit in June of that year. Others suggest that he may not have intended to deliver the final paragraph he did. Some have noted that part of this iconic delivery resembles a speech given by the Reverend Archibald Carey, Sr. at the 1952 Republican Convention but the words have resonated across generations and still move people today. The final section is as follows ( with some repetitions removed)
• I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"
• "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."
• "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."
• "This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."
• "Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
• "Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom (to) ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Let us hope that if Barack Obama is elected to the most powerful position on earth that, unlike Kennedy and King, he will live to be afforded the opportunity to try and fulfil the hopes so many will have placed on his shoulders.
You may be about to witness a black man walk into the White House…
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