Obama pays tribute to 'towering' King
President Barack Obama saluted Dr Martin Luther King today as a man who “stirred our conscience” and made the Union “more perfect”.
He was speaking at a dedication of a monument commemorating the murdered civil rights leader’s life and work.
“I know we will overcome,” Mr Obama proclaimed, standing by the imposing granite monument honouring King on the National Mall. “I know this,” the president said, “because of the man towering over us.”
Mr Obama and his wife, Michelle, and Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, joined a host of civil rights figures for the dedication on the sun-splashed Mall in Washington.
“He had faith in us,” said Mr Obama, who was six when King was assassinated in 1968. “And that is why he belongs on this Mall: Because he saw what we might become.”
Mr Obama credits King with paving his way to the White House. Before his remarks, the president left a copy of his inaugural speech in a time capsule at the monument site.
Crowds began to gather at dawn at the memorial site, just to the south-east of the steps where King delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Designed as what King described as a stone of hope hewn from a mountain of despair, the memorial is the first to a black man on the National Mall and its parks.
