Gratitude?

To critics who claim that Barack Obama didn't show gratitude toward the sacrifices and work of African-Americans who preceded him, Barack Obama responded:

This country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit - that American promise - that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night, and a promise that you make to yours - a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west; a promise that led workers to picket lines, and women to reach for the ballot.

And it is that promise that forty five years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

These were the final words of Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention Speech. Cornell West criticizes Barack Obama (as he has done for much of the presidential race) for not showing enough gratitude to the African-Americans who worked so hard in the Civil Rights Era and before. After Obama's speech, West complained to Tavis Smiley that Obama couldn't even bring himself to mention Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name. I thought a while about this criticism. When I returned to the Internet to read Obama's speech, having only listened to it last night on television, I was struck, however, that Obama does not even NEED to say King's name. King is a great man whose achievement is so bound to our nation's history that everyone immediately recognizes the slightest allusion to him.

Over the last week, I've listened to several young African-American men, local and national leaders, describe Obama and themselves as a new wave of Civil Rights leaders. They recognize what they owe the previous generation, but they are looking more toward the future than the past.

One thing that makes me proud to be a Democrat at this point in history is the diversity I saw in the delegates as well as in the speakers who stood at the podium over the course of these four days. In those final lines, Barack Obama directly stressed our unity in that diversity. In a very subtle and intelligent way, he uses the very language of King and emphasizes that dream of forty-five years ago:

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.. . .
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Source for selections from Martin Luther King's speech: Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream."

Source for Barack Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention Speech: MSNBC.MSN.COM