By Abraham Kenmore
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — Vice President Kamala Harris told a crowd gathered outside the Statehouse that the freedoms Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for six decades ago are under attack, and voters must fight back at the ballot box.
King “dedicated his life, and in the end gave his life, to advance one of our nation’s highest ideals – the ideal of freedom,” Harris said Monday, Jan. 15, in her roughly 15-minute speech at the NAACP’s annual King Day at the Dome event.
The NAACP named the theme “Ballots for Freedom, Ballots for Justice, Ballots for Change!”
Harris said the freedoms at risk this election year include LGBTQ rights and abortion access. South Carolina is among states across the South that have enacted strict restrictions or near-total bans on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a half century of precedent and returned the legality of abortions to state legislators last summer.
“Freedom is fundamental to the promise of America,” Harris said. Under assault, she continued, is “freedom from fear, violence and harm, freedom to vote, to live, to learn, to control one’s own body, and the freedom to simply be.”
Harris was the featured speaker less than three weeks before South Carolina Democrats go to the polls for the first presidential primary recognized by the national party. Early voting for the contest starts in just one week.
President Joe Biden is expected to win handily over two little-known challengers.
But state and national Democrats want a strong showing in South Carolina, where Black voters make up a large part of the party’s base, to galvanize support amid polls that show a drop in enthusiasm for Biden among Black voters nationally.
In her speech, Harris cited part of King’s famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” address in Washington, in which he called the words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence a promissory note that all Americans would be guaranteed the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Harris quoted King, saying, “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. … So, we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.”
She told the people who marched Monday from Zion Baptist Church in downtown Columbia to the Statehouse they are an extension of King’s fight to make the promise a reality.
“Though we have come far, in this moment it is up to us to continue that fight, to cash that promissory note,” she said.
In conclusion, she said, “Freedom is never truly won. You earn it, and win it, in every generation.”
Harris’ attendance brought extra layers of security for the event hosted annually by the NAACP since 2000. Initially organized as a protest of the Confederate flag that, at the time, still flew from the Statehouse dome, King Day at the Dome has become a must-attend event for Democratic presidential campaigns.
In 2020, Biden was among presidential contenders walking arm in arm down Main Street to speak at the Statehouse. Harris had dropped out of the race a month earlier. The event then went virtual for two years amid the pandemic before resuming in person.
This year, people who walked the half-mile from the church, the event’s traditional start, had to go through metal detectors at a security checkpoint before being allowed on the Statehouse’s front lawn. It was also the first time that tall security glass separated the speakers from the audience.
Other high-profile Democrats in Columbia for the event included U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who gave the main speech at the church to start the day. Like King, he said, sometimes people must step forward without knowing the destination.
He quoted a Bible passage from Luke, when Jesus and his disciples are in a boat, and Jesus calms the sea.
King stepped forward into the storm, guided by faith, Jeffries said.
“When he would go into a town like Birmingham, or St. Augustine, or Selma, Alabama, he wasn’t greeted with wine and roses,” he said. “He was greeted with billy clubs and fire hoses.”
He called for the audience to carry on the fight for justice.
“You can’t get from your departure to your point of destination without encountering at some point along the way some turbulence,” Jeffries said.
The event attracted separate groups of protesters this year.
Some people held signs calling for reparations for Black Americans.
Others protested the Israel-Hamas war. Some of them were removed from Statehouse grounds by security. It’s unclear how many.
Monday’s speech was Harris’ second in South Carolina this month.
In Myrtle Beach on January 6, she told a crowd mostly of Black women it was time to “roll up their sleeves” and organize for a second Biden term. That speech was given to the 7th Episcopal District African Methodist Episcopal Church Women’s Missionary Society retreat.
Biden himself campaigned last week at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, where he thanked Black voters in South Carolina for putting him in the White House. He will return one week before the February 3 Democratic primary for the party’s “First in the Nation Celebration” dinner.
Abraham Kenmore is a reporter covering elections, health care and more. He joins the S.C. Daily Gazette from The Augusta Chronicle, where he reported on Georgia legislators, military and housing issues.
