‘We can’t be a spectator, you got to participate,’ congressman says at SC King Day event
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson called on the hundreds who marched during the annual King Day at the Dome to continue to fight against injustice.
Thompson, who chaired the U.S. House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, was the keynote speaker for the first in-person King Day at the Dome since the beginning of the pandemic.
“In the spirit of Martin, we can’t (just) be a spectator, you got to participate,” the Mississippi Democrat said. “As soon as we finish praying, we have to get off our knees and work.”
During the march from Zion Baptist Church to the State House, the crowd chanted “No justice! No peace!”, “Fired Up! Ready to Go!” and “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
Marchers also sang a brief rendition of “We Shall Overcome.”
Thompson’s appearance in South Carolina comes several weeks before the Democratic National Committee is expected to vote on placing the Palmetto State first in the Democratic presidential primary nominating order.
President Joe Biden proposed making South Carolina first in the order for 2024. Biden won the South Carolina primary in 2020 after losing in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
“There’s nothing like voting for somebody who remembers who voted for them,” Thompson said. “When you do the right thing, you should get rewarded and so you’re being rewarded for that.”
Thompson applauded a court challenge to South Carolina’s congressional map that resulted in a three-judge federal panel ordering a redraw of the First Congressional District. The federal panel ruled the previous map discriminated against Blacks.
“I’m excited to come here to see that people are still about about the business of fighting injustice.
Thompson also took shots at Republicans who worry about the costs of improving health care or education.
“Every time we start talking about ... helping people they talk about how much it costs, balancing the budget,” Thompson said. “The last four years of Donald Trump, you never heard balancing the budget. You never heard the debt limit, because he spent money like a drunken sailor and nobody said anything.”
This year’s King Day at the Dome, on the holiday to commemorate civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, returned to an in-person rally after two years of being a virtual event because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
King Day at the Dome started more than two decades ago when protesters stood outside the Capitol and demanded the Legislature take down the Confederate flag from atop the State House dome.
Lawmakers in a legislative deal later moved the flag to the front of the complex, next to the Confederate soldier monument, facing Gervais and Main streets. After the June 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston where nine Black Charleston churchgoers, including a state senator, were killed, the Legislature removed the flag completely from the State House grounds.
On Monday, speakers lamented the legislature’s move to establish a firing squad to execute prisoners, the passage of legislation allowing people to openly carry firearms, efforts to restrict abortion access in the state, efforts to create educational savings accounts to provide public dollars for students to go to private schools, and redistricting and recent midterm elections that left the State House with fewer Black members.
Speakers regularly called those in the crowd to even attend school board meetings as those have become battlegrounds over what can be taught inside classrooms including whether “critical race theory” is taught in schools.
“They want us to see their side of history, but not our own,” said Courtney McClain, the president of the NAACP South Carolina State Conference Youth and College Division. “We need to stand up and demand what our community wants. We are the change.”
This story was originally published January 16, 2023 at 1:59 PM.
