Also see:
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications •
Editor's Note: The following speech was given by Senator Barack Obama to mark
Martin Luther King Day at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He gave the
speech at the invitation of the church's minister and congregation. This church
is the site where Dr. King began his ministry and where he began his campaign
for social justice.
Obama Addresses Ebenezer Baptist Church
By Senator Barack Obama
t r u t h o u t | Speech
Sunday 20 January 2008
Atlanta - Senator Barack Obama
delivered the following speech yesterday at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
The Scripture tells us that when Joshua and the Israelites arrived at the gates
of Jericho, they could not enter. The walls of the city were too steep for any
one person to climb; too strong to be taken down with brute force. And so they
sat for days, unable to pass on through.
But God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march
together around the city, and on the seventh day he told them that when they
heard the sound of the ram's horn, they should speak with one voice. And at
the chosen hour, when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together,
the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.
There are many lessons to take from this passage, just as there are many lessons
to take from this day, just as there are many memories that fill the space of
this church. As I was thinking about which ones we need to remember at this
hour, my mind went back to the very beginning of the modern Civil Rights Era.
Because before Memphis and the mountaintop; before the bridge in Selma and
the march on Washington; before Birmingham and the beatings; the fire hoses
and the loss of those four little girls; before there was King the icon and
his magnificent dream, there was King the young preacher and a people who found
themselves suffering under the yoke of oppression.
And on the eve of the bus boycotts in Montgomery, at a time when many were
still doubtful about the possibilities of change, a time when those in the black
community mistrusted themselves, and at times mistrusted each other, King inspired
with words not of anger, but of an urgency that still speaks to us today:
"Unity is the great need of the hour" is what King said. Unity is
how we shall overcome.
What Dr. King understood is that if just one person chose to walk instead of
ride the bus, those walls of oppression would not be moved. But maybe if a few
more walked, the foundation might start to shake. If a few more women were willing
to do what Rosa Parks had done, maybe the cracks would start to show. If teenagers
took freedom rides from North to South, maybe a few bricks would come loose.
Maybe if white folks marched because they had come to understand that their
freedom too was at stake in the impending battle, the wall would begin to sway.
And if enough Americans were awakened to the injustice; if they joined together,
North and South, rich and poor, Christian and Jew, then perhaps that wall would
come tumbling down, and justice would flow like water, and righteousness like
a mighty stream.
Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because
it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only
way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.
I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit.
I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.
I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm
taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand
that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words
of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.
We have an empathy deficit when we're still sending our children down corridors
of shame - schools in the forgotten corners of America where the color of your
skin still affects the content of your education.
We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers
make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit;
when mothers can't afford a doctor when their children get sick.
We have a deficit in this country when there is Scooter Libby justice for some
and Jena justice for others; when our children see nooses hanging from a schoolyard
tree today, in the present, in the twenty-first century.
We have a deficit when homeless veterans sleep on the streets of our cities;
when innocents are slaughtered in the deserts of Darfur; when young Americans
serve tour after tour of duty in a war that should've never been authorized
and never been waged.
And we have a deficit when it takes a breach in our levees to reveal a breach
in our compassion; when it takes a terrible storm to reveal the hungry that
God calls on us to feed; the sick He calls on us to care for; the least of these
He commands that we treat as our own.
So we have a deficit to close. We have walls - barriers to justice and equality
- that must come down. And to do this, we know that unity is the great need
of this hour.
Unfortunately, all too often when we talk about unity in this country, we've
come to believe that it can be purchased on the cheap. We've come to believe
that racial reconciliation can come easily - that it's just a matter of a few
ignorant people trapped in the prejudices of the past, and that if the demagogues
and those who exploit our racial divisions will simply go away, then all our
problems would be solved.
All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand
in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all
people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling
to pay the price.
But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change
in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.
It's not easy to stand in somebody else's shoes. It's not easy to see past
our differences. We've all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes
it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks
to drive us apart - that puts up walls between us.
We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from
us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like
us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our
tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer
as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.
For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have
been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand
intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays - on the job,
in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands
are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our
own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The
scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For
too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of
companions in the fight for opportunity.
Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all
races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television.
It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign
for president, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues
instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.
So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the
task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scapegoating,
the ease with which we blame our plight on others - all of this distracts us
from the common challenges we face - war and poverty; injustice and inequality.
We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down.
We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison
that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before
the hour grows too late.
Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful
who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon
them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up
our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.
But if changing our hearts and minds is the first critical step, we cannot
stop there. It is not enough to bemoan the plight of poor children in this country
and remain unwilling to push our elected officials to provide the resources
to fix our schools. It is not enough to decry the disparities of health care
and yet allow the insurance companies and the drug companies to block much-needed
reforms. It is not enough for us to abhor the costs of a misguided war, and
yet allow ourselves to be driven by a politics of fear that sees the threat
of attack as way to scare up votes instead of a call to come together around
a common effort.
The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And
if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we
must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living
up to this country's ideals and its possibilities will require great effort
and resources; sacrifice and stamina.
And that is what is at stake in the great political debate we are having today.
The changes that are needed are not just a matter of tinkering at the edges,
and they will not come if politicians simply tell us what we want to hear. All
of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt
from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also
have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the
biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge
the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal
the will to break its grip.
That is how we will bring about the change we seek. That is how Dr. King led
this country through the wilderness. He did it with words - words that he spoke
not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words
that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the
Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner.
He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led
by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his
family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would
diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding
that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won
on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.
That is the unity - the hard-earned unity - that we need right now. It is that
effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope
- the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.
The stories that give me such hope don't happen in the spotlight. They don't
happen on the presidential stage. They happen in the quiet corners of our lives.
They happen in the moments we least expect. Let me give you an example of one
of those stories.
There is a young, twenty-three-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organizes
for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She's been working to organize
a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and
the other day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around
telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And
because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care.
They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had
to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced
her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything
else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to
eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at
the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could
help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help
their parents too.
So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone
else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and
reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly
black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks
him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say
health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not
say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in
the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl
and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to
the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and
shake.
And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta.
And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia.
And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if
enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down.
The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down. That is our hope - but
only if we pray together, and work together, and march together.
Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.
In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.
In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone.
In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.
So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine,
and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us,
and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice,
for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may
God bless the United States of America.
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Features:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story