Joe Biden’s observation is clear: the United States must do better in the fight against racial discrimination. Speaking in the church of Martin Luther King, the president said on Sunday that his famous dream of equality and justice had “not yet” come true, and called once again to fight for “the soul ” from America.
“I have spoken in front of parliaments, kings, queens and leaders around the world, but here I am intimidated,” said the US president, the first incumbent to speak during the Sunday service in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. This is where Martin Luther King, who would have turned 94 on Sunday, officiated.
A bust of Martin Luther King in the Oval Office
Joe Biden evoked the most famous speech of the icon of the fight for civil rights and against racial discrimination, assassinated in Memphis in 1968, in which he chanted “I have a dream”, “I have a dream”. “It remains the mission of our time to make this dream a reality, because it is not yet the case,” said the president.
Recalling that he had installed a bust of the pastor in the Oval Office, Joe Biden declared, using one of his favorite formulas: “The battle for the soul of America is eternal”, it is a “struggle constant” to defend “this sacred conviction that we are created equal and in the image of God. “There is still a lot of work to be done on economic justice, civil rights, the right to vote,” he acknowledged.
We Shall Overcome to end the ceremony
Joe Biden had been invited to Atlanta by Raphael Warnock, today the main pastor of the church, but also a Democratic senator who won a disputed ballot last November against a candidate dubbed by former President Donald Trump. Welcoming his guest after a gospel song, Raphael Warnock joked that for this devout Catholic president, the Baptist office would probably seem “a bit exuberant”. The ceremony concluded as the choir sang We Shall Overcomean iconic anthem of the civil rights movement.