Washington (CNN) – A pair of lines praising Martin Luther King, Jr. were scrubbed from an early version of President Bill Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address, apparently after someone in the White House raised questions about how the rhetorical flourishes would play with white people.
A rough draft of the 1998 speech was included in a new batch of previously withheld documents released by the National Archives and the Clinton Presidential Library on Friday. It included a passage about racial healing, tentatively titled "One America In The 21st Century."
Washington (CNN) - Organizers of Wednesday's 50th anniversary March on Washington did not invite the nation's only African-American senator to speak at the civil rights commemoration, his office said, a sign of the complicated politics of racial equality.
Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed to the position in January, is currently the only black senator and is one of only eight African-Americans to ever serve in the U.S. Senate.
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Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama's address Wednesday from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, representing a symbolic moment in U.S. history.
On that day in 1963, when King and his fellow marchers attended what he labeled 'the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation," few in that crowd could have imagined that half a century later, the first African-American president of the United States would mark the occasion with a speech in the same location.
FULL STORYWashington (CNN) - President Barack Obama joked that his address marking the 50th anniversary of the historic "I Have A Dream" speech "won't be as good" as Dr. Martin Luther King's original.
King's 1,600-word address – arguably one of the most important speeches of the 20th century – became a crucial moment in the struggle for civil rights in the U.S.
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(CNN) – The controversial written passage on the side of the National Mall's Martin Luther King Jr. memorial has been removed, the sculptor said Thursday.
Chinese artist Master Lei Yixin told reporters at a press event in front of the memorial that the inscription had been removed by deepening the grooves that give the side of the memorial texture.
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Washington (CNN) - As the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial was officially dedicated Sunday, speakers called for carrying on King's ideals and values and confronting issues including bullying and social and economic justice for all Americans.
"Nearly 50 years after the March on Washington, our work - Dr. King's work - is not yet complete," President Barack Obama said at the dedication ceremony.
FULL STORYWashington (CNN) – On the morning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial dedication, a longtime Georgia congressman and the last surviving speaker from the March on Washington said King was not only a instrumental figure in American culture—but in him, as well.
“I saw segregation. I saw racial discrimination. I tasted the bitter fruits of racism,” Rep. John Lewis said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And he made me a different person. And today I can say I don't have any bitter feelings or have any anger or hatred (toward) human beings.”
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