By HELENE COOPER and SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: October 16, 2011
WASHINGTON — Promising that “change can come if you don’t give up,” President Obama, the man who is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the civil rights movement, on Sunday called on Americans to use the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.to help push for progress in today’s economically tough times.
Speaking at the dedication of the monument to Dr. King on the National Mall, Mr. Obama, at times adopting the cadence of Dr. King, said Americans must celebrate all that the civil rights movement accomplished even as they understand that the work is not done. Standing under the new monument, the first on the mall to honor an African-American, Mr. Obama struck tones that veered from the church pulpit to the floors of the nearby Capitol.
“I know there are better days ahead,” Mr. Obama said, his voice rising. “I know this because of the man towering above me.”
At times, Mr. Obama appeared to be drawing a comparison between himself and Dr. King. Often when he spoke of Dr. King’s struggles, it was impossible not to think that he was speaking of himself.
“For every victory, there were setbacks,” Mr. Obama said. “Even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many.”
He continued, “He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast and by those who felt he was going too slow.”
Mr. Obama’s speech culminated a morning — beautifully sunny and bright on the Washington Mall — during which a lion’s gallery of civil rights and black leaders stood on the podium to hail that a preacher of no rank had joined Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to be memorialized into perpetuity in the National Mall area. Thousands of people crowded the mall for the festivities, which were rescheduled after Hurricane Irene canceled the initial plans.
The memorial — a four-acre tract along the Tidal Basin that is dotted with elm and cherry trees and anchored by an imposing granite statue of Dr. King — is the result of more than two decades of work. It was originally scheduled to be dedicated in August to coincide with the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial.
The expansive three-hour ceremony included speeches by civil rights leaders like Representative John Lewis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and songs by performers like Aretha Franklin.
People came from all over for the event. Yvonne Binis took an early morning train with her 4-year-old grandson from Linden, N.J. Ms. Binis’s mother had been part of the March on Washington, and she said she came in honor of that.
“I’m here to see what she came down for,” Ms. Binis said, carrying a large folding chair in a backpack.
Some in the crowd remembered their childhoods in the Jim Crow South. Carolyn Bledsoe, 70, recalled the shame of being turned away from a restaurant in Goldsboro, N.C., in the 1950s, because she was black. “We got very scared,” she said, sitting in a blue dress jacket and a white baseball cap, with an insignia of the memorial on it. “We thought we might be followed.”
Mr. Obama is facing stiff challenges in his bid for re-election next year, particularly as the country is grappling with a 9.1 percent unemployment rate and a global economy that is reeling.
He urged patience. “Change depends on persistence,” Mr. Obama said. “When met with hardship, when confronting disappointment, Dr. King refused to accept what he called the ‘is-ness’ of today,” Mr. Obama said. “He kept pushing towards the ‘oughtness’ of tomorrow.”
Mr. Obama said that “when we think of all the work that we must do,” including rebuilding the economy and fixing ailing schools, “we can’t be discouraged by what is; we’ve got to be pushing for what ought to be.”
The monument is not only the first to a black man on the mall and its adjoining parks but also the first to honor someone who was not a president, according to the foundation in charge of putting it up, something that has been an inspiration to many.
“I drive past the mall every day, and to see that Martin Luther King is now there with Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Roosevelt — that is powerful,” said Lonnie Bunch, a founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
Dr. King’s stone figure faces the Jefferson Memorial across the water. Lincoln is at his back, and Roosevelt to his right.
The design gave form to a line from Dr. King’s “Dream” speech — “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” In the statue, he is emerging from a large piece of stone. Two towering granite mounds set behind him are the mountains of despair.
Mr. Bunch said that the dedication offered an opportunity to assess race relations in America.
“We are not in a post-racial America, but in an America that allows us to talk about race candidly in different ways,” he said. “Having a statue of Martin Luther King, without even saying it, lets people know that this is a different mall, this is a different America.”
For those who knew Dr. King, the dedication also offered an opportunity to remember the emotion and the intensity of the civil rights movement.
“The March on Washington was the point where the whole country seemed to come together,” said Sterling Tucker, a civil rights leader who worked with Dr. King. “It felt like, here we are, marching together as a nation in the right direction.”
Mr. Tucker, who is president of the National Theater in Washington, said he experienced the same feeling when Mr. Obama was elected in 2008. That this country elected an African-American, he said, was possible only because of the work that had been done by Dr. King’s generation, a point that Mr. Obama himself has often made.
“People think times are better because times have changed,” Mr. Tucker said. “No. They are better because people worked hard to make them better.”
Congress authorized the memorial in 1996, and Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity, set up a foundation to establish it. A Chinese sculptor, Lei Yixin, was selected to create the 30-foot sculpture, and the Roma Design Group, a company in San Francisco, designed the layout, which includes a wall with Dr. King’s quotations and nearly 200 cherry trees. The cost was $120 million, and organizers said they were still trying to raise the last $3 million.
Mr. Tucker recalled the euphoria of the March on Washington a little wistfully. His said his generation of civil rights leaders was aging, and he sometimes had the sense that young blacks feel that the older generation dwells too much on that past.
Young black political leaders — Mr. Obama; Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark; and Adrian M. Fenty, the former mayor of Washington — “are cut from a different cloth,” Mr. Tucker said, moving beyond the racial politics of the past into new types of leadership.
But for all the gains, he said, there is still work to be done.
“Now there’s just more sophistication in trying to perpetuate the same old ways,” he said.
The memorial, Mr. Bunch said, will help.
“For so long we either tried to ignore race, tamp it down or try to say that it’s over, that we’ve solved all the problems,” he said. “His struggle helped us realize there’s still a great deal of ambiguity about race. His monument will ensure we don’t forget it.”
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