Even with Obama, struggle not over, SCLC leaders say

WASHINGTON — As the nation celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day and anticipated the inauguration of the nation’s first black president, civil rights leaders here cautioned that the fight for equality for African-Americans is still far from over.

“We are here because the struggle is not over — the struggle has just begun,” declared Rev. Charles Steele, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King was the first president of the group, which is based in Atlanta.

At its annual prayer breakfast here — part celebration, part gospel revival — conference leaders proclaimed to more than 450 guests that their organization is alive, well, and still necessary, even after Barack Obama takes office Tuesday.

“Barack Obama has run the last lap of a 60-year race,” said Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was an aide to King and SCLC co-founder Ralph Abernathy.

“Like any great finisher, he ran a strong last lap,” Jackson said. “But this is not a four-year race. This is a tag team race.”

Elsewhere in Washington, organizers of a long-delayed memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. announced Monday they had received a $1 million donation from a Chicago energy company.

Exelon Corp.’s donation brings the total raised for the memorial to $104 million. Organizers, who have been working on the project for more than a decade, say they need $120 million to build the tribute on the National Mall, not far from the Lincoln Memorial where King gave his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.

At the SCLC breakfast, Jackson pointed out that without the civil rights movement, there couldn’t be a black president.

In an emotional recount, Jackson — who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1984 and 1988 — described those who died in the movement as part of the lineage that led to a black president.

Solemnly recalling the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, the slaying of King in 1968 and the lynchings and beatings of black Americans before and after, Jackson at different times had a crowd of several hundred crying and cheering.

“We tore down the wall, and with the stones we built the bridge” to the presidency, Jackson said.

Jaunita Abernathy, cautioned Americans to be patient with Obama.

“He is not God,” said the widow of Ralph Abernathy. “Let’s not expect him to be a super human being. With the mess Barack Obama has inherited, there’s no way on Earth he can correct it in four years.”

In an interview, Steele said the group moved its annual prayer breakfast from Atlanta to Washington this year not just to celebrate Obama’s inauguration, but also to make sure people remember the civil rights struggle that got the country to the point where it can inaugurate a black president.

“We want to express that things like this don’t just happen,” Steele said. “People had to fight and sacrifice for things to get where they are.