WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Monday's inaugural may be President Barack Obama's big day, but
Martin Luther King Jr. will loom large over the festivities.
A
quirk in the calendar pushed Obama's public swearing-in onto the
national holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader, and inaugural
planners have taken pains to acknowledge that fact. Going into his
second term, Obama seems to have put King at the front of his mind, too.
The
president has referenced King in speeches, and the weekend of inaugural
festivities opened Saturday with a National Day of Service in King's
honor. Obama and his family also helped spruce up an elementary school
in southeast Washington. The Obamas have performed community service
work on the King holiday in each of the past four years.
Obama
spoke at the 2011 dedication of a monument to King on the National Mall
and is likely to include King in his inaugural address.
The
president has said King is one of two people he admires "more than
anybody in American history." President Abraham Lincoln is the other. In
a nod to that admiration, Obama will take his ceremonial oath of office
Monday using Bibles owned by both men. Lincoln's Bible, which Obama
also used in 2009, will rest on top of King's, which is larger.
"The
movements they represent are the only reason that it's possible for me
to be inaugurated," Obama said in a video released by inaugural
planners.
Obama is perhaps the most
high-profile product of King's quest for civil rights and racial
equality in the U.S. He credits King for his own political victories,
particularly the 2008 election win that lifted him over the highest
hurdle for minorities in American politics.
Even
with that, there are distinctions in their styles. While King was a
staunch advocate for the poor and downtrodden, Obama has been faulted by
critics who say he's been reluctant to push issues of concern to black
people and take steps to reduce high rates of black unemployment. Where
King opposed wars in general and was an unwavering advocate of
nonviolence, Obama has shown himself to be willing to target and kill
leaders of terrorist groups overseas.
Fredrick
Harris, director of Columbia University's Center on African-American
Politics and Society, argues that Obama's reluctance to bring black
issues to the forefront undermines the work of King and other civil
rights leaders whose efforts made his presidency possible.
"Dr.
King died in 1968 fighting for low-wage garbage workers in Memphis,
Tenn. He was starting a national poor people's movement to address the
issues of poverty," Harris said. "With the president, a Democratic
president for that matter, who has spoken less on race or the poor or
poverty than any Democratic president in a generation, it is problematic
when we think of that aspect of King's legacy."
On
at least one foreign policy issue, the Middle East, Obama and King seem
to be in accord. Lewis V. Baldwin, a religious studies professor at
Vanderbilt University, writes in a new book that Obama's approach to
Israeli security and empowering the Palestinians dovetails with King's
thoughts on the matter.
On the jacket of Baldwin's book, "In a Single Garment of Destiny," Obama explained his take on King's idealism.
"When
met with hardship, when confronting disappointment, Dr. King refused to
accept what he called the `isness' of today. He kept pushing for the
`oughtness' of tomorrow," Obama wrote.
Obama
recognizes his role in U.S., and even world, history and how he has
benefited from the work of King and other civil rights advocates. During
his presidency, he has paid regular tribute to King, who was
assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tenn., when Obama was just 6
years old. American's first black president will deliver his second
inaugural address looking out across the National Mall toward the
Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech
nearly 50 years ago.
One of eight floats
scheduled to participate in the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue between
the Capitol and the White House will honor King, featuring his image and
a representation of his quote "out of the mountain of despair a stone
of hope."
A wreath-laying ceremony was planned
for Sunday at the King memorial on the Mall, though it was scheduled
during Obama's swearing-in at the White House, and the president was not
expected to attend.
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a
veteran of the civil rights movement who knew King and knows Obama,
said the symbolism is overwhelming.
"It is
almost too much to believe that we would commemorate this year, the
150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 50th anniversary
of the March on Washington," Lewis said. "I don't know what you'd call
it, something about time and history and fate all coming together."
Lincoln
issued the proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, during the Civil War,
declaring all slaves in states rebelling against the Union to be
"forever free."
Vicki Crawford, director of
Morehouse College's Martin Luther King Jr. Collection, said the
inauguration falling in a year of civil rights milestones is a prime
opportunity for the nation to re-examine its past and look ahead to the
future.
"Obama is a part of the continuum of a
history that began before Dr. Martin Luther King," she said. "It's a
long history of struggle to make America the place it should be to make
real on the promise of democracy. This is a momentous time; 2013 is a
crossroads."
Harris, the Columbia University
professor, said that while King's moment in 1963 and Obama's in 2013 are
evidence of how far the country has come despite persistent racial
polarization, he would like to see Obama start to emphasize issues that
were important to King.
"I would also hope
that this won't be just a day of recognition but also that it will point
in some direction in the second term that the president will begin to
speak much more clearly and forcefully about the persistence of racial
inequality in American life," he said.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rgiths reserved.
