Quote:
Originally posted by Pin the Tale on the Donkey
"I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator... As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African-American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race. Anyone who actually reads the Emancipation Proclamation knows it was more a military document than a clarion call for justice."
-- Senator Barack Obama
|
"I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Abraham Lincoln, September 18, 1858
It may be statements like this that keep Obama from "swallowing whole" the idea of Lincoln as Great Emancipator.