Barack Obama speaking at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. Thanks to Joe Klein at the Time Magazine Blog.
One of the best speeches ever, even with the religious slant. Full speech follows or watch the video.
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 yolk 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 scape-goating, 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.
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