45 Years after King's 'Dream,' Obama's Nomination is a Reality
Yesterday, attorney Barack Obama made history by becoming the first African-American ever to be nominated by a major party as a candidate for president of the United States. It was almost exactly 45 years, to the day, after civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Among those who were there in person, both at the March on Washington during which King made his speech and at the Democratic National Convention at which Obama was nominated, was Nathaniel Jones. A federal court of appeals judge for 25 years, he formerly served as general counsel for the NAACP and is currently a partner and chief diversity officer of the Blank Rome law firm. Now 82, he says he never thought he would live to see the day when a black presidential candidate would be nominated, reports Bloomberg.
“This is much more than a political campaign. This has taken on the dimensions of the march in 1963,” says Jones, who first met Obama when he was a student at Harvard Law School and helped him raise money to run for the Senate in 2004. “This is a movement. Every so often in history there is a spark, someone who can cause a flame to blow.”
In addition to having a dream of seeing African-American citizens on an equal footing with others, King also spoke that day, 45 years ago, about the promise of equality under the law that America had made, in its Constitution and Declaration of Independence, to people of color, says Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald.
“On Thursday, a nation whose credo holds equality to be a birthright will see a brown-skinned man, son of Kenya and Kansas, assume leadership of a major political party,” Pitts wrote in a newspaper column published just before Obama accepted the nomination. “No, it is not the panacea, not the End of Race in America. But it is striking evidence of a promise fulfilled, a dream redeemed.”
Additional coverage:
Associated Press: “A historic date, a ‘Dream’ coming closer”
Updated at 3:20 p.m., central time, to include link to Associated Press coverage.
