Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I have one frustration from the experience.
As a pastor for almost a half century; you now making the living of taking up offers.
I have a frustration that i had a congregation of 2 million people and couldn't figure up a way of taking up an offering.
(laughing and clapping)
But remember you promised not to tell anybody.
Before I finish that story about the inauguration, let me share with the young people something another young person said the other day that I want you to hear.
You may not know her to well, her name is Beyonce.
(laughing)
In case you don't know she sings and dances.
(laughing)
A reporter asked her, what do you think of President Obama.
And she said, oh my god everytime I hear him or everytime I see him I want to be smarter.
I want to be more intelligent, I want to be more informed, I want to be more involved.
All my young people hear Beyonce, don't emulate her shaking.
(laughing)
Emulate her thinking.
Theres a level of thinking that shows there is hope for America.
We ought to, everybody not just Black folk, every member of the coalition of conscious when we realized what America did.
The step America took to higher ground to which he climbed.
We ought to want to be smarter, we ought to want to be more intelligent, we ought to want to be more involved in the political process
(clapping)
I feel better about America since that happened.
Thats a great and shining moment in our history.
I felt good up on that mall and they said when you get up there you going to look down across the mall and your going to see the Lincoln Memorial and you'll see the Washington Monument and I looked forward to that.
But when I got up there there was a little haze.
But I saw the Washington Monument piercing the clouds.
But these old eyes, which I've been straining for 88 years, they couldn't quite pick out the Lincoln Memorial.
And I worried about that even as I gave the prayer.
But while I was praying my soul spoke to me.
And my soul said don't worry about your eyes.
I'll be your eyes, I'll see the Lincoln Memorial.
And my heart said I'm not going to let your soul have the whole day.
I will be your ears, I will hear a voice on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
A voice that lifted itself 46 years ago and said I had a dream.
And that voice on those steps that day in August of 1963 issued a summons to America to climb up out of the lowlands of race and color.
To the higher ground of content of character.
And here I was, thank god, participating in the response of my country to that summons issued in 1963.
And I can't stand the Star-Spangled Banner.
I think it is a terrible National Anthem; bombs bursting in air, rockets' red glare.
Somebody ought to get a bill in Congress to change it to more beautiful for spacious skies, for amber ways of grade, for purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain.
America, America God shed his grace on thee and crowned thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
But even the Star-Spangled Banner that day, which is the song that came after my prayer, sounded good to me.
America had risen out of the basement of race and color and stood tall across the universe by electing an African American to the highest office in the land.
Happy Birthday Martin, Happy Birthday Martin, God bless you and God bless America.
(clapping)
I'll take easy questions.
Question: Good Evening Pastor.
(cont.) When you were young and growing up, before you made it to seminary school and decided you were going to be a minister, was there ever anybody when you were young telling you werent going to make it?
(cont.) And did you every believe them for a second and did they encourage you to go farther when they told you you weren't going to make it?
You know I really don't remember anybody having the guts to look me in the eyes and tell me I wasn't going to make it.
I really don't.
I remember circumstances and events that might have served to intimidate or deliver a message that I wasn't going to make it.
But thank God I had people around me who always told me I wouldn't make it and I couldn't make it.
I remember an incident when I was about twelve years old.
I was coming out of a place called the Sweet Shop, it was a little restaurant that my father ran.
And I was two thirds out of the door and a big police officer; you understand he was white, there was no such thing as a black police officer when I was a boy.
And he took his nightstick and he punched me in the belly and said get back, don't you see a white man coming.
Of course I got back I didn't have any choice.
And I went home and I wasn't nonviolent then.
I remember a little silver barrell pearl handle pistol that my father had in the drawer and I went home to get the pistol to go look for this man who had punched me in the belly.
And when I was coming out with the pistol in my pocket my father met me on the front porch.
Now here is what strange about that, my father's work; I never seen my father home that time in the afternoon in my life except on Sunday, but this was not a Sunday.
And I don't know what brought him home that time of day except it may have been to save my life.
He took the gun, gave me a good tongue lashing, and went next day to see the mayor to complain.
The mayor told him Lee, there is nothing I can do thats the only kind of person I can find to work the police force, your just going to have to get over it.
My father came back and told me that.
We both sat down in my living room and cried and then we prayed.
And from that moment on I determined that someday somehow somewhere I would try to do all I could to change that kind of feeling in our society.
I never hated white people, and all during the movement we never hated we always told young people its love that motivate us.
People who have discriminated against us have been trained and taught to hate, we must not hate we must be nonviolent, for we seek to redeem the soul of America.