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."
Just this week, I was asked whether I thought the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report
shows that, with respect to race, little has changed in this country.
I understand the question, for the report’s narrative was woefully familiar.
It evoked the kind of abuse and disregard for citizens that spawned the Civil Rights
Movement.
But I rejected the notion that nothing’s changed.
What happened in Ferguson may not be unique, but it’s no longer endemic, or sanctioned
by law and custom; and before the Civil Rights Movement, it most surely was.
We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination
are immutable, or that racial division is inherent to America.
If you think nothing’s changed in the past fifty years, ask somebody who lived through
the Selma or Chicago or L.A. of the Fifties.
Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s
changed.
Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty
years ago.
To deny this progress – our progress – would be to rob us of our own agency; our responsibility
to do what we can to make America better.
Of course, a more common mistake is to suggest that racism is banished, that the work that
drew men and women to Selma is complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a
consequence of those seeking to play the “race card” for their own purposes.
We don’t need the Ferguson report to know that’s not true.
We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation’s racial
history still casts its long shadow upon us.
We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won, and that reaching that blessed
destination where we are judged by the content of our character – requires admitting as
much.
Facing up to the truth.
And with effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched
across this bridge – and that is the right to vote.
Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed
to make it harder for people to vote.
As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed.
Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the
product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future
subject to partisan rancor.
How can that be?
The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result
of Republican and Democratic effort.
President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office.
President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office.
One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing
to die for the right it protects.
If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred
more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year.
Of course, our democracy is not the task of Congress alone, or the courts alone, or the
President alone.
If every new voter suppression law was struck down today, we’d still have one of the lowest
voting rates among free peoples.
Fifty years ago, registering to vote here in Selma and much of the South meant guessing
the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap.
It meant risking your dignity, and sometimes, your life.
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?
"Fellow marchers, so much has changed in fifty years.
We’ve endured war, and fashioned peace.
We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect of our lives, and take for granted
convenience our parents might scarcely imagine.
But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship, that willingness of a 26 year-old
deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five, to decide they loved this
country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.
That’s what it means to love America.
That’s what it means to believe in America.
That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.
For we were born of change.
We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed
by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and
by and for the people.
That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction, because we know our
efforts matter.
We know America is what we make of it.
We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea – pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede
of farmers and miners, entrepreneurs and hucksters.
That’s our spirit.
We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and
then some; and we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that
truth.
That’s our character.
We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses
yearning to breathe free – Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan.
We are the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because they want their kids to
know a better life.
That’s how we came to be.
We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South.
We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened the West, and countless laborers who laid
rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.
We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent, and we’re the Tuskeegee
Airmen, Navajo code-talkers, and Japanese-Americans who fought for this country even as their
own liberty had been denied.
We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, and the volunteers who
signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We are the gay Americans whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York,
just as blood ran down this bridge.
We are storytellers, writers, poets, and artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy,
and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told.
We are the inventors of gospel and jazz and the blues, bluegrass and country, hip-hop
and rock and roll, our very own sounds with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom.
We are Jackie Robinson, enduring scorn and spiked cleats and pitches coming straight
to his head, and stealing home in the World Series anyway.
We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of, who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong
as we know how.”
We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and
suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”
That’s what America is.