Visiting a black church bombed by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights era, US presidential candidate Joe Biden on Sunday said that the US faces an enduring struggle over race that is older than the nation.
“In a centuries-long campaign of violence, fear [and] trauma brought upon black people in this country, the domestic terrorism of white supremacy has been the antagonist of our highest ideals since before the founding of this country,” Biden told the 16th Street Baptist Church congregation in downtown Birmingham as they commemorated the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four black girls in 1963. “It’s in the wake of these before-and-after moments when the choice between good and evil is starkest.”
During his 20 minutes at the pulpit, Biden — who is seeking the Democratic nomination for next year’s election — said that institutional racism was the direct legacy of slavery and that the nation has “never lived up to” the ideals of equality written into its founding documents.
“Those who are white try, but we can never fully understand,” Biden said.
The former vice president said the names of the bombing victims — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley — adding that “the same poisonous ideology that lit the fuse on 16th Street” has yielded more recent tragedies, including in 2015 at a black church in South Carolina, last year at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh and last month at an El Paso, Texas, Wal-Mart frequented by Latino immigrants.
The Birmingham church offers an example to those communities and a nation he said must recommit itself to “giving hate no safe harbor — demonizing no one, not the poor, the powerless, the immigrant or the ‘other,’” he said.
Parishioners wielded their cellphones when he arrived with US Senator Doug Jones, who is beloved in the church for his role as the lead prosecutor who secured convictions decades after the bombing occurred.
The congregation gave Biden a standing ovation when he completed his remarks.
Alvin Lewis, a 67-year-old usher at 16th Street Baptist, said the welcome does not necessarily translate to votes.
However, as Lewis and other congregants offered their assessment of race relations in the US, they tracked almost flawlessly the arguments Biden has used to anchor his campaign.
“Racism has reared its head in a way that’s frightening for those of us who lived through it before,” Lewis said.
He said that he was at home, about “20 blocks from here” when the bomb went off at 10:22am on Sept. 15, 1963.
“No matter what anyone says, what comes out of the president of the United States’ mouth means more than anything,” Lewis said.
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