but it is again under constitutional challenge and is likely to go back to the Supreme Court. The achievements are real but the remaining challenges are also real.”
Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, says conditions in America are the reason he has decided to join the Aug. 27 march, the day before the dedication. Led by Rev. Al Sharpton and radio personality Tom Joyner, the march and rally will call for jobs in commemoration of King’s 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom.
“Some have asked why we plan yet another demonstration on this important anniversary,” Henderson said. “Our nation is today, as it was in Dr. King’s time, at a crossroads of extraordinary significance. We face massive economic upheaval exceeded only by the Great Depression in its impact. We are mired in two wars which sap our strength both in lives and treasure. And finally, we suffer a new level of partisan extremism which elevates political interests over the national interest, and threatens the very existence of our democracy as we know it.”
Two-and-a-half years ago, America celebrated with great awe, the election of its first African-American president. But, it took only a few months to see that that fete gave rise to as much racism as it did to racial healing. Race experts, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, identified clear racial animus toward President Obama. Federal law enforcement reported more death threats against him than any of his predecessors. Coupled with the reality that Dr. King was killed by an assassin’s bullet April 4, 1968, while fighting for civil rights, the Secret Service has taken no chances. Obama has had a tighter security force than any other president in history, indicating that America has yet to overcome.
“Dr. King’s dream of justice for all has yet to be realized,” says Charles J. Ogletree Jr., professor at Harvard Law School and founding director of Harvard’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. “We have made great progress, but there is no time to rest. The struggle for racial justice must continue even now.”
Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, agrees.
“The 48th Anniversary of the March on Washington of 1963 is a reminder that the struggle for jobs and justice (freedom) is not something we win and then move on to something else,” Campbell says. “The struggle for jobs and justice is a lifelong fight for those who believe in inclusion. It is the responsibility of each generation to continue the fight against those who believe in exclusion based on race, class, political ideology and sexual orientation.”
She said, “The biggest challenge America faces to progress as a nation is to learn from the lessons of the past and build on past and current movements of inclusion including: equal pay for women, voting rights, disability rights, fair housing, health care for all and environmental justice.”
Meanwhile, organizers of the Aug. 28 celebration hold out hope that the unveiling and the memorial itself will stand as a permanent reminder and impetus for movement toward complete fulfillment of the dream of true equality.
“Dr. King was a profound teacher, whose lessons were anchored in the primacy of human dignity. He enacted irreversible social change and led our country forward, relying exclusively on nonviolent means,” says Johnson, president of the Memorial Project Foundation. “The Memorial will be a lasting tribute to Dr. King’s legacy and will forever serve as a monument to the freedom, opportunity and justice for which he stood.”
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