WASHINGTON – Barack Obama was 2 years old and growing up in Hawaii when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Fifty years later, the nation’s first black president will stand as the highest-profile example of the racial progress King espoused, delivering remarks today at a nationwide commemoration of the 1963 demonstration for jobs, economic justice and racial equality.
Obama believes his success in attaining the nation’s highest political office is a testament to the dedication of King and others, and that he would not be the current Oval Office occupant if it were not for their willingness to persevere through repeated imprisonments, bomb threats and blasts from billy clubs and fire hoses.
“When you are talking about Dr. King’s speech at the March on Washington, you’re talking about one of the maybe five greatest speeches in American history,” Obama said in a radio interview Tuesday. “And the words that he spoke at that particular moment, with so much at stake, and the way in which he captured the hopes and dreams of an entire generation I think is unmatched.”
In his interview Tuesday with Tom Joyner and co-host Sybil Wilkes of the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” Obama said he imagines that King “would be amazed in many ways about the progress that we’ve made.”
He listed advances such as equal rights before the law, an accessible judicial system, thousands of African-American elected officials, African-American CEOs and the doors that the civi-rights movement opened for Latinos, women and gays.
“I think he would say it was a glorious thing,” he said.
Obama has said King is one of two people he admires “more than anybody in American history.” The other is Abraham Lincoln.
