Jessica attended an event today, Thursday, to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Jessica’s grandfather was black, and she heard about the stuggles that he faced in society, especially because he married a white woman. Even though the issue of race isn’t being emphasized at the DNC Convention, Jessica views it as a huge accomplishment for our society that an African-American person has gotten the nomination.
Before the event started, Jessica talked with some African-Americans from Los Angeles, who said how proud they were of Obama and how far society has come since the MLK speech. Jessica asked them what they thought about the comments of Rev. Jackson Sr. and Rev. Wright — they said that Jackson and Wright are just two individuals who don’t speak for all African-Americans, and they said that Jackson’s and Wright’s egos were perhaps getting in the way.
At the event, speakers included Angela Bassett, Danny Glover, Martin Luther King III, Carrie Washington, and New York Governor Patterson. Patterson talked a lot about the sacrifices that people made in the civil rights movement so that Obama could be the nominee. A key theme of all the speeches was that Obama’s nomination is a momentous occasion, but this isn’t the end of the movement for racial equality.
