OPINION:
As part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign to promote racial equality and to promote the imminent passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his team organized a massive rally at Chicago’s Soldier Field that summer. Nearly 70,000 people were in attendance at the rally. A group of elementary school friends and I were among those present that day. I recall how, in a dramatic and cathartic move, King arrived in the stadium standing in a white Cadillac convertible as he made his way to the dais.
A few minutes later, King delivered an impassioned plea for justice and fairness. I remember being filled with enthusiasm and optimism as I listened to his moving remarks. Beyond exuding a profound religious fervor, King articulated his firm belief in the ultimate fairness of the American people. A feeling of hope emanated from his remarks. His speech was replete with faith that, in time, the goodness of our nation would prevail.
Few public events have moved me as profoundly as that gathering at Soldier Field. It marked me and has remained with me. The recollections of that day and the optimism King expressed back then surged when, decades later, I watched on television as Barack Obama acknowledged his presidential electoral victory in Chicago’s Grant Park. As he spoke, my eyes looked over his left shoulder, where I could see Soldier Field looming in the distance. It brought back to mind that impressive rally at which King had so eloquently presided and spoken.
The recollection brought tears to my eyes as I wondered whether, despite King’s unfailing optimism, I had really believed that our nation would overcome some of its most profound prejudices and a person of color would ascend to the highest position in our nation in my lifetime. Yet as I watched then-Sen. Obama basking in the glow of electoral victory, I was moved to see that it had happened in fulfillment of King’s prophetic optimism.
The Obama presidency may not have been the era of national reconciliation that many had hoped. Nonetheless, that Mr. Obama was elected president of the United States, and perhaps more importantly was reelected to a second term, was a powerful echo of King’s sense that ours is a great nation where goodwill can triumph over evil.
It is with all of this in the back of my mind that I watched President Biden’s recent remarks to the graduating class of Howard University, one of the nation’s preeminent historically Black colleges and universities.
The contrast to my Soldier Field experience could not have been starker. Mr. Biden stood before a group of young graduates and, with what can only be characterized as a snarl on his face and anger in his voice, proceeded to attack his fellow citizens. He launched a full-fledged attack on Americans who disagree with him. He inappropriately taunted large segments of our population as racists. He inaccurately warned that white supremacists are the greatest threat to our nation and he urged his listeners to fear and distrust their fellow Americans.
Mr. Biden’s remarks were not only accusatory but also strikingly dark, ominous and pessimistic. They suggested a Hobbesian vision of the American character, filled with brutish qualities and a vision of perpetual conflict. There was a quality of hopelessness about them.
How different Mr. Biden’s demeanor was, I thought, from the comportment of King. Indeed, the president’s words served to remind me of another rally that I attended, not as a proud participant, but rather as an opposing demonstrator. This was a rally in 1968 at the International Amphitheater at the Chicago stockyards where George Wallace, then a third-party candidate for president, railed at the state of our nation, urging division and alluding to racial conflict. A few of us, all students at the University of Chicago, boisterously expressed our disdain for the angry and divisive rhetoric that Wallace was spewing.
I felt then and I feel now that the role of all political leaders, especially the president, should be to elevate and reconcile our citizens. Both by his actions and through his words, the person who is the nation’s chief executive has, in my view, the obligation to inspire and motivate all of us to better behavior.
Mr. Biden’s words to the graduates of Howard University were the opposite. They were an incitement to anger, to distrust and to potential violence by young people who should, to the contrary, be urged to look optimistically to a future of creativity and collegiality with their fellow citizens. Sadly, the president’s remarks reminded me far more of Wallace’s speech than of King’s.
Recalling King’s inspirational words of nearly 60 years ago, I can feel only a profound sadness at the current tenor of our national dialogue, as prompted from the very apex of our society. Instead of pursuing King’s path of nonviolence, conciliation and constructive engagement with those with whom he disagreed, we are engaged on a path of endless antagonism, invective and disruption. When the president of the United States espouses this approach, it is particularly painful.
Today, I feel nostalgia for the days when Blacks and Whites contemplated together overcoming the injustices of the past through nonviolent efforts and the then-president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, through word and action, promoted civil rights and sought to eschew racial division and conflict. A return to that approach would be most welcome.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. His book, “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution,” was published by HUC Press last year.
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