Dozens of descendants and families of prominent Black civil rights leaders and historical figures gathered at the White House on Tuesday for a historic convening for Black History Month, fulfilling a plan set in motion nearly 20 years ago.
“It’s been really wonderful,” Kenneth B. Morris Jr., standing outside the West Wing, said of the gathering he helped organize.
Morris, a multi-great grandson of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, and more than two dozen other descendants and family members of historical Black luminaries and leaders had come together for the first time at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex.
Invitees in attendance included the descendants and families of Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Sally Hemings, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.
Attendees, joined by members of Congress and Biden-Harris administration officials, were briefly greeted by Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black history figure herself.
America’s first Black vice president praised the descendants’ ancestors, whom she described as “extraordinary American heroes” who “believed in the promise of America” and had a “level of faith and sincere belief in the words written in the Constitution of the United States of America.”
Harris said that as leaders, “We owe them a great sense in terms of duty and responsibility and obligation to continue to carry on their legacy through our deeds…our words and our actions.”
Morris told theGrio the event came to be after he and his mother, Nettie Washington Douglass, talked about the idea of gathering other descendants of historical Black luminaries to “leverage” the platform “afforded to us by the struggle and sacrifice of our ancestors to work on issues that we were passionate about.”
Morris, who organized the assemblage and worked with the White House Office of Public Engagement to launch…
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