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Thousands Gather for MLK Memorial Dedication
President Obama urged the nation Sunday to celebrate the dedication of the memorial to slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. by continuing to press for the goals and hopes of the “black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams” and helped make the nation “more perfect.”
In a speech that at times seemed to link King’s own struggles for civil rights with Obama’s political struggles during the economic downturn, the president said the nation was still encountering many of the same challenges that King saw when he made his “I Have a Dream” speech that helped to galvanize the civil rights movement in 1963.
Obama, who was six when King was assassinated in 1968, said King deserved a place on the national Mall because “he had faith in us. . . and that is why he belongs on this Mall: Because he saw what we might become.”
