US White House hopefuls honored Reverend Martin Luther King Jr on the 40th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s slaying, paying tribute to a man whose memory takes on particular significance in a historic race that could result in the country’s first woman or black president.
On a solemn day in which Americans took stock of the changes in their country in the decades since the civil rights protests of the 1960s, Democratic senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and Republican Senator John McCain reflected on King’s cause, while nudging forward their White House bids as a new government report showed unemployment hit 5.1 percent last month.
The two Democrats seized on the report, linking McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, with what they see as US President George W. Bush’s failed economic policies.
“Perhaps this jobs report will also help John McCain recognize that doing nothing is not an economic strategy in times of urgent need,” said Clinton, who is vying to become the US’ first woman president.
She proposed a second economic stimulus of at least US$30 billion to help states combat the foreclosures that have ravaged some communities.
Obama accused Bush of hurting people with an economic policy “in which basically the answer to every problem is tax cuts for the wealthy.” He also linked King’s work to the present, saying economic justice is “still out of reach for too many Americans.”
McCain, who has been portrayed by the Democrats as weak on the economy, said in a statement that Obama and Clinton’s various proposals would hamper economic growth.
Speaking in Memphis in front of the balcony where King was shot in 1968, McCain said the civil rights leader “seems a bigger man” than he did on the day of his death.
“The quality of his character is only more apparent,” he said, telling a black audience that he had been wrong to vote against legislation making King’s birthday a holiday.
McCain’s decision to speak at ceremonies held by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King had headed, was intended to demonstrate an eagerness to appeal to black voters who have long shunned Republicans. A few boos were heard as McCain spoke, but others offered up calls of “Amen” throughout his speech.
Clinton spoke at the church where King delivered his final sermon a day before his death.
The former first lady recalled her distress at learning of his death while she was a college student. She added that “because of him, after 219 years and 43 presidents who have all been white men, this generation will grow up taking for granted that a woman or an African-American could be president of the United States.”
Obama was the only one of the three to not appear in Memphis.
Addressing a rally in Indiana, he said King’s pleas have yet to be answered fully.
“You know, Dr King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. ... But here’s the thing — it does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us in our own ways put our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice,” Obama said.
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