Ambassador Perry's Speeches

Black History Month Film Show at Kissy Library

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, good afternoon and welcome.  I am very happy to be here with you today to celebrate Black History Month.  Thanks to the staff of the Kissy library and of our own Information Resource Center for making this program possible.

A little more than a week ago, we at the Embassy commemorated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the non-violent civil rights movement in the United States and an advocate for human rights around the world.  His vision of all people working together in harmony was recognized when he became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964.

Dr. King led a movement around the United States to gain equal protection and rights under United States law for African Americans.  He organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, to end segregation, to guarantee labor rights and to protect other basic civil rights of all Americans.  Many of these rights were guaranteed with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

All this month, we are celebrating the legacy of Dr. King and of many other great African-American leaders who worked for human rights around the world and who made significant contributions to politics, science and literature.

The film that you will see shortly was written by a great African American, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Director of the DuBois Institute at Harvard University.  Professor Gates has had a remarkable influence on  scholars and students around the world, especially through his “Encyclopedia Africana,” the most comprehensive encyclopedia  on the history of Africa, its relationship with Europe, Asia and the Americas.    Dr. Gates has reached beyond the world of the university to reach a wider audience through television and film  We hope that through this special showing, he can help you learn more today about the complex histories and lives of many people.

My own involvement with the civil rights movement and history was kindled during my early years in Texas and continued when we lived in Chicago.  My family was active in civil rights for many years; my grandfather was sitting in the front of the bus in segregated Texas long before Rosa Parks made her historic stand in Alabama.  My parents read the works of W. E. B. DuBois and the speeches of former slave turned newspaper publisher and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass.  They were active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and I was one of the NAACP youth organization representatives in the historic March on Washington in the summer of 1963, where he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

The civil rights movement in Chicago sought to change the abominable housing practices in the city and its suburbs.  Before civil rights reform, real estate agents in the Chicago area kept the suburbs segregated by refusing to sell or rent housing in white neighborhoods to minority families, regardless of their economic, employment status, or ability to pay and care for the property.

I participated in Dr. King’s Chicago March to protest those practices as well as in media outreach campaigns alongside activists like future Congressmen John Lewis and Andrew Young.  Unfetterd, equal access to land and credit became the driving issue for the civil rights movement in Chicago and remains an issue in many countries around the world today, including here in Sierra Leone.

To put the ideas of the civil rights movement to practical use, however, it is crucial to understand Dr. King’s methods.  Sometimes, people who are oppressed want to rise up violently, but violence is ineffective -- violence only causes more violence.  The way to see real change in a society is through nonviolent, rational resistance against unjust laws and unjust leaders through an on-going dialogue between all parties.

Dr. King was a great admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, whom he met on his trip to India in 1959.  King’s own civil disobedience philosophy was based on Gandhi’s principle of nonviolent activism, and his movement was staunchly committed to that ideal.  On Dr. King’s final evening in India, he said he was:

“more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.”

The principles of non-violence were central to the success of the civil rights movement in the United States, and should be at the core of any civil rights movement that intends to succeed.  It is with that in mind that we celebrate the achievements of the civil rights movement in the United States and of African Americans in general.

Thank you for welcoming me here today, and I hope you enjoy the film.