'Don't Give Up on Activism', Obama Tells Black Church at King Day Service
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Originally posted 1/19/2010
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – When President Barack Obama walked into the sanctuary of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., he immediately broke into a clap and a sway to the soulful tune of “How I Got Over.”
Before rising to give his message at the historic Black church in the city’s North West, he had also bobbed his head to a jazzy version off “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” and tapped his feet to “This is the Day that the Lord Has Made.”
The movements were all signs that the nation’s first Black President was feeling at home with Pastor Cornelius R. Wheeler, his wife, Carla, and the Sunday morning congregation, packed in for the special Martin Luther King Birthday service.
“It feels like a family. Thank you for making us feel that way,” he said in opening remarks. Then, with First Lady Michelle and their daughters Malia and Sasha, looking on from the pews, he rendered a message of hope that drew shouts of “Amen!” “My Lord!” and “Yes!”
“We aren't here just to interpret His Scripture. We're also here to call on the memory of one of His noble servants, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, it's fitting that we do so here, within the four walls of Vermont Avenue Baptist Church - here, in a church that rose like the phoenix from the ashes of the civil war; here in a church formed by freed slaves, whose founding pastor had worn the union blue; here in a church from whose pews’ congregants set out for marches and from whom choir anthems of freedom were heard; from whose sanctuary King himself would sermonize from time to time.”
Quoting one of those King sermons – “The Challenge of a New Age” - from Dec. 6, 1956, Obama recounted what he described as a victorious moment with a future that “still seemed daunting” to the then 27-year-old civil rights leader.
“It was a period of triumph, but also uncertainty, for Dr. King and his followers - because just weeks earlier, the Supreme Court had ordered the desegregation of Montgomery's buses, a hard-wrought, hard-fought victory that would put an end to the 381-day historic boycott down in Montgomery, Alabama,” Obama said.
“And yet, as Dr. King rose to take that pulpit, the future still seemed daunting. It wasn't clear what would come next for the movement that Dr. King led. It wasn't clear how we were going to reach the Promised Land. Because segregation was still rife; lynchings still a fact. Yes, the Supreme Court had ruled not only on the Montgomery buses, but also on Brown v. Board of Education. And yet that ruling was defied throughout the South - by schools and by states; they ignored it with impunity. And here in the nation's capital, the federal government had yet to fully align itself with the laws on its books and the ideals of its founding.”
Comparing that moment to what America faces today, Obama said that more than a half century later, America is facing the challenges of a new age with the same hope, doubts and second guessing of strategies.
“Unemployment is at its highest level in more than a quarter of a century. Nowhere is it higher than the African-American community. Poverty is on the rise. Home ownership is slipping. Beyond our shores, our sons and daughters are fighting two wars. Closer to home, our Haitian brothers and sisters are in desperate need. Bruised, battered, many people are legitimately feeling doubt, even despair, about the future. Like those who came to this church on that Thursday in 1956, folks are wondering, where do we go from here?”
In a moment of transparency, Obama also noted that he, as President, has also faced doubts and disappointments in his first year in office, largely due to those who don't hail small victories while constantly complaining.
“Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don't want to see that even if we don't get everything, we're getting something,” he said. “King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn’t end the civil rights movement, because Black and White soldiers still couldn't sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces.
That was a good first step - even as he called for more. He didn’t suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn’t think that we shouldn’t sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn’t solved every problem. Let's take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were - which was progress.”
But, as sure as the seasons changed for the “harsh winters” of slaves and others who fought for a better life for Americans down through the ages, faith will eventually give way to substance, he promised:
“It was for them, as it is for us, difficult, in the dead of winter, to sometimes see spring coming. They, too, sometimes felt their hopes deflate. And yet, each season, the frost melts, the cold recedes, the sun reappears. So it was for earlier generations and so it will be for us.”
He implored the audience, to – like King – never stop pushing for that better life.
“Don't give up on voting. Don't give up on advocacy. Don't give up on activism. There are too many needs to be met, too much work to be done.” Like Dr. King said, ''’We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.’''
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