“It’s a historic event,” she said.
A native of Oakland, Calif., and one of seven children, she said she had always wished she could have attended the 1963 march. “We watched it on TV, and I said if anything like that ever happens and I can go, I will go,” Stovall said.
Some 10,000 spectators arrived on the National Mall early Sunday morning for the dedication of a stone memorial for civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Among the speakers were a who's who of civil rights leaders as well as President Obama.
The first person in line was David Carl, 23, of Toronto, an intern at the Canadian Embassy.
Asked why he had come, Carl said, “I really admired Martin Luther King. I want to be able to tell my kids, my grandkids that I was here, that I saw the . . . dedication of this memorial.”
Emma Logan, 62, who was part of a group that had traveled from Atlanta, said King had “opened the door” for Obama’s election. “If it wasn’t for Dr. King, President Obama wouldn’t be here today.
“He opened up all these doors for us and everything, by getting beat up, riding the buses, marching, doing all those things like that,” she said.
Pamela Warner, 56, was part of a 50-person Chicago delegation wearing yellow caps and representing the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
King’s era “represents part of my childhood,” Warner said. She said she was in third grade in 1963, the year of the march. “I’ve always learned from it,” she said. “Teachers, my parents, aunts, uncles, everybody. So this is my time.”
Maureen Forte, 61, director of the Chicago NAN chapter, said: “This is history. We have parents, and grandparents and children here, and each one of them will have a story to take back home and take to their family.”
Sitting in a wheelchair, Jerline Johnson, 72, of Milwaukee, a retired General Motors autoworker, was beside her daughter, Yvette, 48, as the ceremony got underway. Johnson, who is black, speculated on what King would have made of all the fuss.
“I think he would smile and say that we got a long ways to go,” Johnson said.
She said she grew up on a farm in Jackson, Tenn., and well remembers the harshness of segregation. She recalled being relegated to the backs of buses and being barred from “white” water fountains and eating areas.
She recalled visiting a zoo with a white family for which she worked and being forced to wait in the car because blacks were not permitted in the zoo that day. “It was just so many different things,” Johnson said, “so many.”
She said, “We’ve come a long ways. But we still got a long way to go, because there’s so much hatred in some people’s heart. I just wish [King] could have lived longer to see some of the changes that did take place behind what he was trying to get done.”
King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39.
Several members of his family spoke Sunday.
His older sister, Christine King Farris, in a majestic blue hat, introduced herself as the person who knew King longer than anyone else now alive.
“He was my little brother,” she said. “During my life, I watched a baby become a great hero.”
She said she was overwhelmed by “this beautiful monument, which brings honor to our country and hope to future generations.”
Obama spoke shortly after 11 a.m. in a VIP area on the grounds of the memorial, cordoned off from the general public. His speech was broadcast live to the public and on television.
He praised King as the “black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals.”
As he spoke, the water of the Tidal Basin sparkled in the background and the white contrails of airliners streaked the blue sky overhead.
Earlier, Harry E. Johnson Sr., president of the foundation that built the $120 million memorial, spoke about the “dark day” in August when he had to postpone the dedication.
But “joy cometh in the morning,” he said. “And what a glorious morning this is.”
Staff writers Theola Labbé-DeBose, Carol Morello, Hamil Harris and Tim Smith contributed to this report.
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