King Day at the Dome Has Different Tone This Year

The South Carolina NAACP’s 10th Annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina Statehouse had a much different feel than previous years. Many of those marching carried signs or pictures, wore photos, buttons or hats of Barack Obama, many of them finding it hard to believe that one day after honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. they will see America’s first African-American president sworn in. And, because of that, the crowd was smaller because many of the people who would normally have been in Columbia are in Washington, D.C for the inauguration.

But Shirley Crawford drove to Columbia from Morven, North Carolina for King Day at the Dome as part of her celebration of Obama’s victory. “I turned 70 the other day and I thought I’d never see this! I said, ‘Maybe my children will.‘ But I thanks the Lord that I did get a chance to see this day,“ she says.

She imagined what Dr. King would think of Obama’s swearing-in one day after the King Holiday. “Oh, he would say, ‘I’ve seen the mountaintop and here I am now.‘ He would say this is great! This is what he sacrificed his time for, to see this day.”

DiAna DiAna of Columbia also couldn’t believe the timing of the events and the historical significance of Obama’s inauguration. “I think it’s just wonderful that we’ve come so far,” she says.

But the focus of the march wasn’t entirely on Barack Obama. NAACP leaders reminded the crowd that it still wants the Confederate flag removed from the Statehouse grounds, where it flies at the Confederate Soldier Monument. And state NAACP president Dr. Lonnie Randolph said one black president out of 44 doesn’t change everything.

State lawmakers moved the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome at the first King Day at the Dome in 2000, at which more than 50,000 people protested the flag. Because of the compromise, which took the flag off the dome and raised it at the monument in front of the Statehouse, most state lawmakers say the issue is over and they’re not moving it again.

But national NAACP member Rev. Nelson Rivers tied the flag’s future to Obama’s election, telling the crowd at the Statehouse, “There were those who said it would never happen. And in the same vein, there are folk who said to us, ‘They’ll never take that flag down’. But let me tell you, as a native of South Carolina, I’m used to folk telling me ‘Never’ about what’s going to happen anyhow!“