SELMA, Ala. — President Obama returned to this small city where civil rights protestors endured brutal beatings 50 years earlier and sought to recast their decades-old bravery as the highest form of patriotism: one that confronted the nation’s flaws and sought to change them.
His address at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Saturday offered up a sweeping survey of the nation’s civil rights battles on behalf of minorities, women, immigrants and people with disabilities. He made an explicit connection between gay rights protestors “whose blood ran on the streets of San Francisco and New York” and the wounds suffered by those who marched across this bridge in 1965.
Obama has been lambasted by Republicans for his sometimes tough criticism of the country he leads. One goal of Saturday’s speech was to respond to his critics with a more nuanced kind of patriotism that fits his progressive vision for the country.
“We gather here to honor the courage of ordinary Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod; tear gas and the trampling hoof; men and women who despite the gush of blood and splintered bone would stay true to their North Star and keep marching toward justice,” Obama said.
The core of the speech was the president’s effort to describe in detail a vision of American exceptionalism that embraces the country’s flaws and its ongoing quest to perfect itself through hard work, civil disobedience in the face of injustice and nonviolent protest.
The stage where Obama spoke was built at the base of a steep pitch in front of the bridge, where demonstrators leaving Selma and marching toward Montgomery on March 7, 1965, still wouldn’t have been able to see the state troopers who were waiting for them with canisters of tear gas and cattle prods. The date has become known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Obama was introduced by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), whose skull was fractured by Alabama state troopers on the bridge, and joined by Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of George C. Wallace, the Alabama governor who ordered the attacks on the demonstrators. The president described the courage of protestors to press for change and endure savage beatings as a love of country and kind of patriotism that was quintessentially American.
“What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people — the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many — coming together to shape their country’s course?” Obama said. “What greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?”
About 40,000 spectators filled a five-block area hemmed in by dilapidated buildings to hear the speech. Although the crowd was predominantly African American, it included every shade of American.
At times, Obama seemed to be addressing two audiences: the adoring crowds that had come to the bridge to hear him speak, and his largely absent Republican critics who have accused him of overly fixating on the country’s flaws or not loving the country he was elected to lead. Obama cited the sacrifices of the three martyrs of the Selma protests: Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old deacon; Viola Liuzzo, a mother of five from Michigan; and James Reeb, a Unitarian minister. All were killed as part of the voting rights protests.
“That’s what America is,” he said. “Not stock photos or airbrushed history or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American as others.”
The president tackled the question of race — which has reemerged in the wake of recent police killings in Ferguson, Mo.; Cleveland; and New York — but emphasized that it would be a mistake to say the ongoing tensions between police and the communities of color in which they operate mean that no progress had been made over the past half-century.
“Just this week, I was asked whether I thought the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report shows that, with respect to race, little has changed in this country,” he said. “But I rejected the notion that nothing’s changed. What happened in Ferguson may not be unique, but it’s no longer endemic, it’s no longer sanctioned by law or by custom; and before the civil rights movement, it most surely was.”
But the nation’s first African American president also called for criminal-justice reform and made a point of reminding white Americans that “this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us. We know the march is not yet over, we know the race is not yet won, we know that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character — requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth.”
Obama dedicated a substantial portion of his address to the recent battles over efforts to tighten voter registration rules and scale back some aspects of the Voting Rights Act, which a chastened and outraged President Lyndon B. Johnson submitted to Congress only a week after the Bloody Sunday attacks. “Right now, in 2015, 50 years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote,” Obama said. “The Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor. How can that be?”
Nearly 100 members of Congress made the trip from Washington to Selma, but Republican leaders — with the exception of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were largely absent. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a statement honoring “the brave foot soldiers who risked their lives to secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans.”
The president drew the loudest applause of the day when he challenged those who had made the trip to return to Washington and reverse changes to the landmark voting act. “If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather 400 more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year,” he said.
George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, joined Obama in Selma. The former president did not address the crowd, but Obama noted that both Bush and president Ronald Reagan signed renewals of the voting act while in office.
The president’s speech, however, largely steered clear of policy prescriptions in favor of words that were intended to stir the soul and celebrate the sacrifices of civil rights reformers who the president noted had once been branded “Communists, half-breeds, outside agitators.”
Time and again he returned to the theme of a new kind of patriotism that embraced not only America’s veterans, its businessmen and first brave explorers, but also its protesters and dissidents who, Obama said, “believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what’s right and shake up the status quo.”
After the speeches were done, a small group of civil rights activists and politicians joined Obama, George W. Bush and members of their families in walking partway across the bridge. The group of more than 50 walked arm-in-arm and sang, “Keep your eyes on the prize,” with the president and first lady joining in. The column moved slowly, to keep pace with elderly foot soldiers such as Amelia Boynton Robinson and Frederick D. Reese, members of the “Courageous Eight” who had risked their lives in Selma.
Near the midway point over the Alabama River, headed away from Selma, Lewis and Robinson recounted the confrontation with police. The president, who now routinely jokes about aging during his time in office, looked deferential, and even young, as he leaned over and listened to the 103-year-old Robinson, in her wheelchair, describe her struggle.
Before they made it to the other side, Obama turned to the aging civil rights heroes gathered on the bridge and thanked them for letting him mark the occasion with them.
“What an extraordinary honor this has been, especially to have Sasha and Malia here,” he said. “Keep us in your prayers.”