"This is truly historic."

[ProSense]

<...>

But today an African American will be nominated for President by a Party that prior to the Civil War accomodated slavery and, under Woodrow Wilson, segregated the civil service. It's also a Party that fought in the 1960s to bring civil rights to all.

This is truly historic. There should be diaries about Barack Obama on the Rec list. It's his day.

KO has a good correction to my title in the Update, which I adopted in part in the Updated version.

I want to point to Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail to remind us how far this nation has come in a generation or so and how historic it is today that Barack Obama will become the nominee of the Democratic Party.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

snip

Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.

snip

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

340 years in 1963. Think about it. From the first slave at Jamestown.

Let's hear Dr. King's speech from 45 years ago tomorrow:

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/27/132626/468/134/576507">Martin Luther King "I have a dream"

The full version of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech.

The dream is being realized, not completely, but being realized a bit tonight with the nomination of Barack Obama. It's a really big deal!!

Barack Obama's speech on race in Philadeplphia.

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/27/132626/468/134/576507">Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union'

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

Full Text here of Obama speech

This is a historic day. A black man will be nominated for President. With all due respect to Mr. Olbermann, who has done great work and certainly can write any diary he wishes, I hope you talk about Barack Obama tonight, and not yourself. Nothing personal, love you and all, but it's Barack's day. It's America's day. And I can say I am proud to be an American today.

Dr. King said: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights.

more

edited in the first section for context

[ProSense]

1. Be Part of History on Thursday Night

Be Part of History on Thursday Night

[Bobbie Jo]

2. K&R

:kick:

[ProSense]

5. Thanks.

Yes. We. Can.

[ProSense]

3. No comments? n/t

[politicasista]

4. K & R

:kick:

[ProSense]

6. Yay!

That is all

[nene1985]

7. I cried today

I cried today because I related this historic moment to my own roots. Both of my great grandfathers came to this side of the world in the belly of a slave ship. My great grandmother was someone's property. My mother has told me stories of helping her grandma get dressed the lash marks on her back from all the beatings she took. My grandfather is the youngest child of two slaves. Three of my grandparents didn't get past grade school. Both of my grandfather's spent their lives cleaning up and driving people around, being their chauffer and butler. One of my grandfather's had cancer and he still had to smile and clean until the day he died. They both hoped for something better for black people. I cried for my father who lived under Jim Crow, who could only go to black school, go to the store on negro day only, who at 7 started helping his father clean because he was getting to sick to do it alone, who marched in civil rights protests, who today in his 60s still has the mark of dog bites on his body. I cried for my mother who when her family was the first black family to move into a black neighborhood her neighbors snubbed her and one of them hung a slave bell in their yard to let them know their place. I cried for myself, for even now as a 22 year old in the post 2000 era, have had people ask me do I play a sport because a black girl could not be in my college without being on some type of athletic team or people asking me how I made a certain grade because surely black kids can't do that well in science, and for being the only black person that year to graduate with a degree in Biochemistry. I cried today because this was not just Barack's moment, it was all of our moment.

[loyalsister]

8. And tonight white people glowed and basked

in the glory of a presidential nomination of this black man whose father came from Kenya.
It was absolutely beautiful!