Hillary commemorates MLK Day
Posted: Monday, January 21, 2008 3:29 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
COLUMBIA, SC -- At an event commemorating MLK Day, held on the steps of a statehouse in front of which the Confederate Flag still flies, Clinton spoke about King's legacy and the need to continue the struggle to fulfill his dream. She kept the focus on work and action.
The New York senator also debuted what sounded like a new slogan, urging everyone who can vote to come out and do so, repeating several times some variation of the phrase, "It is time to stand up, speak out, act and vote."
She received a warm reception from an energized crowd in which several dozen people held up Clinton signs. As all of the candidates have done recently, she highlighted the historic nature of this race and praised her rivals, calling Obama an "extraordinary, young African-American man with so much to contribute" and calling Edwards a "son of the South, in fact a son of South Carolina."
Clinton spoke last and the longest, packing a lot of content into her 10-minute remarks. She continued to use two biblical references heard in recent days in speeches at black churches in California and New York. Telling the mostly black audience that people "cannot just be hearers of the word, we must be doers" and "faith without works is dead." Both of them fit into the talk-vs.-action theme she introduced in New Hampshire to try to draw a distinction between herself and her two rivals. In what sounded like a new play on that theme, Clinton said part of Dr. King's mission was to inspire people to action.
"We are called to something greater and larger than our own individual efforts to succeed. Dr. King knew that. He led a movement of works. A movement of people across our country who raised their voices, rolled up their sleeves and worked for justice," she said.
Clinton was the last to arrive at the event, and both she and Edwards missed a planned march from a nearby church to the statehouse, an event some observers described as "wild" and as an "Obama march". Recent state polls show Obama winning most of the black vote here and black voters made up about half of primary voters in the Democratic primary in the last election.
The Clinton campaign blamed her missing the march portion of the event on confusion surrounding the time the candidate's plane was meant to depart from New York. The traveling press waited more than an hour on the tarmac for the candidate to arrive this morning and the plane touched down in Columbia at just about the time the celebration was set to begin.
As she has done before, Clinton highlighted a moment of kinship between the black leader, Dr. King and a Hispanic one, talking about King's support for labor leader Cesar Chavez. In Nevada, Clinton polled particularly well among Hispanics -- but not as well among blacks. "Dr. King taught us that in the end we are all connected. All tied in a single garment of destiny," she said. "Dr. King knew that while we each confront different injustices, we are all fighting for the same cause. We believe no one should be on the margins or in the shadows. Everyone should be able to fulfill his or her God-given potential and we do have a moral obligation to listen to the voices of those who are often silenced or unheard."
