50 years after Selma, fight for ‘soul of America’ goes on

The symbolism was huge. American politics is full of the symbolic, but this was as powerful as it gets, writes Emily Wilson.

On a bridge in Alabama that was named after a Confederate general in the civil war who was also a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, where exactly 50 years ago dozens of young, black activists were beaten and gassed by police for peacefully demonstrating for the right to vote, now stood the first African-American president of the United States.

Barack Obama gave what one commentator described as his “I have a dream” speech for the 21st century: a tribute to the so-called footsoldiers of Selma, many of whom were seriously injured; a description of the state of race relations in America fifty years on; and a personal take on what it means to love America and to want to make it a better place.

The president stood in front of an estimated crowd of 40,000 people to deliver one of the most impassioned speeches of his presidency. He quoted Scripture and the Declaration of Independence as well as American literary giants James Baldwin, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He presented this day 50 years ago on that bridge as a key moment in American history that has determined the character of the country ever since.

“In one afternoon 50 years ago, so much of our turbulent history – the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war; the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow – met on this bridge. It was not a clash of armies, but a clash of wills: a contest to determine the meaning of America.”

He further presented this painful moment – known as Bloody Sunday – as a uniquely and inspiringly American event.

“What could be more American than what happened in this place? What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people … coming together to shape their country’s course?

“What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this? What greater form of patriotism is there – than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?”

This in some part is a presidential riposte to his Republican critics who have accused him of a lack of patriotism. Last month, the Republican former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, said at a dinner: “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America.”

In small part, this pointed barb may have pushed the president towards a clearer articulation of a form of personal ideology – a kind of “Obamaism”.

This is how he put it: “It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress, who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths.

“It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what’s right and shake up the status quo.”

And it was in this spirit of speaking out that the president ran through the current social tensions that he said were at the centre of the current “clash of wills”: the racism found in the police force in Ferguson, Missouri; the disproportionate number of black men in prison; poverty and joblessness among African-Americans.

These were all cited by the president as signs that “this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us”. But he focused on the right to vote as a central civil rights issue of today.

“Right now, in 2015, 50 years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote,” he declared. He lamented the low turnouts seen in US elections.

“What is our excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought? How do we so fully give away our power, our voice, in shaping America’s future?”

And so the president culminated in a call for the legacy of Selma 50 years on to be a push for greater participation and engagement of all walks of American society in its political process.

He evoked his own campaign slogan of seven years ago, and put it alongside the key tenets not only of the civil rights movement, but of the creation of the United States of America itself.

“Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘we’: ‘We the people.’ ‘We shall overcome.’ ‘Yes we can.’ It is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.

“Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”

After his speech, President Obama walked over the Edmund Pettus bridge – the one named after that Democratic senator and KKK chief.

The president was accompanied by the current Democratic congressman for Georgia’s fifth district, Congressman John Lewis, who walked over that same bridge exactly 50 years ago at the age of 23, and was so badly beaten by a white policeman with a truncheon that he still asks schoolchildren in his district to feel the bump on the back of his skull.

Congressman Lewis himself urged the crowd, buoyed by the poignancy of the symbolism: “Get out there, and push and pull until we redeem the soul of America.”

Emily Wilson is Channel 4 News’s Washington News Editor.