Obama pays tribute to Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King monument

Obama pays tribute to Martin Luther King

US President Barack Obama has officially dedicated a new monument to Martin Luther King Jr in Washington.

President Obama said the 30ft granite statue was not only a tribute to Dr King, but to all those who were part of the civil rights movement.

He said modern America could draw inspiration from the civil rights leader as it dealt with the challenges it was facing.

"At this moment, when our politics appear so sharply polarised and faith in our institutions so greatly diminished. We need more than ever to take heed of Dr King's teachings." Obama said.

Dr King has become one of only a few Americans to be remembered on Washington's National Mall.

Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Roosevelt, Ulysses Grant, are among the other late, great white Americans, wartime presidents or generals.

Dr King, a pacifist, preacher and an African-American has now joined that exalted pantheon.

American values

The new stone monument, which was unveiled in August, was dedicated in front of 150,000 people in the US capital.

Though different from the other monuments in the mall, it is not out of place.

Dr King's life was radically different from the lives of many of his peers celebrated in stone on the mall but he shared and championed the same fundamental American values with them.

The civil rights leader, born on January 16, 1929, to Martin Luther King Snr and Alberta Williams-King, was not a member of the nation's ruling elite - he was an eloquent, iconic orator who advocated peaceful civil disobedience to challenge oppressive racial segregations evidenced in America's socio-economic and political life at the time.

 Civil rights legislation

His genius was his ability to propel himself as heir to the founders of America's constitutional principles and a belief that his opponents were un-American.

His most famous 'I Have A Dream' speech was heard by 200,000 civil rights supporters on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 1963, just a walk away from where his monument now stands. He was the last speaker at the end of the march on Washington, while the civil rights legislation was pending.

The speech became one of the most auspicious and defining moments in modern American history.

In his opening comments, he said: "Five score years ago, a great American in whose shadow we stand today signed the emancipatory proclamation."

Background

A century earlier, Lincoln had begun his Gettysburg address, harking back to the US Declaration of Independence:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Lincoln proclaimed.

A little further into his dream speech, Dr King recalled this theme. America's founding ideals he said, had not been fulfilled.

 The writers of the US constitution, he said, had signed "a promissory note... that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Then in the thematic climax of his speech, perhaps the best known passage, Dr King aligned his dream with the principles of the US Declaration of Independence that Lincoln had dwelt on at Gettysburg.

Dr King said his dream was "a dream deeply rooted in the American dream".
"I have a dream that one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal."

He was assasinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States.

Now half a century later, Dr King's moral and political contributions to America are remembered in stone, a short walk from where he made that momentous speech.

The civil rights clergyman left behind wife- Coretta Scott King and four children. The oldest-Yollanda Denise King is also dead.

The life and politics of the late Dr Martin Luther King Jnr were fundamentally American. 

The monument dedicated to him on Sunday, October 16, 2011, was the American way of showing that he is accepted as a true heir to its founding principles.

Skynews/Hajia Sanni