On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington, the Rev. Jesse Jackson compared the conservative Tea Party with the Confederacy.
In an interview with Politico, the civil rights activist said he was “absolutely” convinced congressional Republicans are motivated by race in opposing the president’s policies.
“The Tea Party is the resurrection of the Confederacy, it’s the Fort Sumter Tea Party,” Jackson told
Politico in remarks published Tuesday.
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None of the half-dozen top Obama aides interviewed for the article, said they’d ever heard Obama suggest race is a factor in GOP opposition to his policies.
“Bill Clinton was a white guy from the country, and they were just as vituperative,” an unnamed presidential adviser told Politico. “But I don’t know what the president thinks about it.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, who’s written on the civil rights movement, told Politico the president appears to be “begging” to ask “to what degree is the partisan gridlock that is frustrating his attempts to govern racially driven?” – but can’t because it could “alienate the millions of white” voters who cast their ballots for him.
Jackson last week became embroiled in controversy after tweeting the “senseless violence” was “frowned upon” that ended with the death of Australian college student Chris Lane in Oklahoma – and then triggered a second r backlash when he took to Twitter about the thrill-kill slaying and got the young victim’s name wrong, the
Washington Times reported.
Scholars and historians count King’s
“I Have A Dream” speech as among the most important moments of the civil rights movement, and thousands are expected to attend rallies in Washington on Wednesday to commemorate the event.
On his Twitter account Tuesday, Jackson recalled the speech, tweeting:
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