President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with the family of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, during which King delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. at the Lincoln Memorial.
All of King’s children have been invited, White House officials said.
The Democratic president made history by opening the Oval Office to King’s family. On August 28, 1963, the day of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, President John F. Kennedy welcomed King and other key march organizers into the Oval Office for a meeting.
The White House did not include the meeting in Biden’s public schedule for Monday.
Biden was also hosting a reception Monday night to mark the 60th anniversary of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization created at Kennedy’s request to help advocate for racial justice.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Biden said the administration was working to advance King’s dream of a society in which a person’s character trumps the color of their skin.
Through important laws and executive orders, “we are advancing equity in everything we do by making unprecedented investments across America, including for Black Americans,” he wrote.
Biden said his policies have led to lower black unemployment, more small businesses started by black entrepreneurs, and more black families covered by health insurance.
He gave some $7 billion to the network of historically black colleges and universities and emphasized black appointments to his cabinet and White House staff, across the federal justice system. and in independent agencies like the Federal Reserve.
“For generations, black Americans have not always been fully included in our democracy or our economy, but out of sheer courage and heart, they have never given up on pursuing the American dream,” Biden wrote.
He also referenced Saturday’s racist attack on a store in Jacksonville, Florida, in which three black people were fatally shot by a white man wearing a mask and firing a weapon emblazoned with a swastika. The shooter, who had also published racist writings, committed suicide.
“We must refuse to live in a country where black families going to the store or black students going to school live in fear of being shot because of the color of their skin,” Biden wrote.
“On this Memorial Day, let us continue to show that racial equity is not just an aspiration. Let us reject the narrow view that America is a zero-sum game that for one to succeed, the other must fail. Let us remember. America is big enough for everyone to succeed and reach their God-given potential.”
The 1963 March on Washington is still considered one of the largest and most significant demonstrations for racial justice in United States history.
The nonviolent protest drew as many as 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial and provided the impetus for Congress to pass landmark civil rights and suffrage legislation in the years that followed. King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Thousands of people converged on the National Mall on Saturday for a 60th anniversary commemoration, with speakers and others saying a country still riven by racial inequality has yet to realize King’s dream of a society colorblind in which her four children “will not be judged on color”. of their skin but by the content of their character.
The event was organized by the King family’s Drum Major Institute and the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
