Comme je le mentionnais hier, le discours d'Obama est attendu avec impatience.
"The dedication Sunday of a dramatic memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a powerful opportunity to reflect on the slain crusader’s admonitions about caring for “the least of us” — and his spirit for the fight, King’s former friends and contemporaries said.
It also underscores a delicate moment for President Barack Obama and the old guard of the civil rights movement. Obama, an admirer of King’s and student of the movement, will dedicate the memorial on Washington’s National Mall.
Under pressure from black leaders to more actively confront black poverty and joblessness, the president’s challenges in his remarks Sunday include paying tribute to King while acknowledging that King’s work, under Obama’s watch, remains unfinished. Later at the White House, the president and first lady Michelle Obama will host a reception for members of the King family, civil rights leader and others in the Blue Room.
The dedication, originally scheduled for August on the 48th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, was postponed when a hurricane headed toward Washington.
“We should be reminded of what Dr. King was attempting to do when he was assassinated at 48 years of age,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a colleague of King’s who was wounded in the 1965 march on Selma, Ala. “He was trying to put poverty on the American agenda.”
“If he could speak to us today — and he will be speaking to us on Sunday — he would tell us that we should provide people with a living wage, end the wars, bring the troops home,” Lewis said of King. “He would say, ‘Do not forget the least of us.’”
Movement leaders who knew King will join Obama at the dedication, among them Lewis, Ambassador Andrew Young, Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Joseph Lowery.
Rev. Otis Moss Jr., who was co-pastor with King at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, also helped organize the Freedom Riders in the South. He participated in marches and pushed for new federal laws with greater protections for African Americans, including the Civil Rights Act. He said Sunday’s dedication underscores how far the movement has come — and what remains to be done.
“This monument, [dedicated by] this president, makes a significant statement to the nation and the world” that King’s work was not in vain, he said. But the fact that the King memorial stands between monuments to Presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington — both slave-holders — and is beside Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw a bloody war to end slavery, is significant, Moss said."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66073.html
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