U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine gives keynote speech at Black History Month event in Spotsylvania
African–Americans have been slaves or second-class citizens for most of their nearly 400-year history in this country, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said Sunday during a Black History Month event in Spotsylvania County.
It was only during the 1960s that the Civil Rights Act required equality, the Virginia Democrat continued.
“But that guarantee of legal equality, awful late in the 400-year history, hasn’t translated into equality in the social sphere, hasn’t translated into equality in the income sphere,” Kaine, a former Virginia governor, told a packed crowd at Second New Hope Baptist Church’s eighth annual Black History Commemorative Service. “We’re not going to now say we’ve been equal for 50 years so everything is even-steven.”
Kaine said the world needs to learn about that history, the good and the bad, during the upcoming 400th anniversary of Africans’ arrival to what is now Hampton, Va. That’s why he recently introduced the “400 Years of African–American History Act,” which would establish a commission to plan programs and activities across the county in 2019. Sen. Mark Warner, D–Va., and Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Newport News, joined him in supporting the measure.
Kaine noted that Congress approved similar commissions to recognize the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding and the 450th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, Fla., by the Spanish.
“If English lives matter, if Hispanic lives matter, then African and African–American lives matter,” he said to applause.
Kaine was the keynote speaker at the event featuring rousing music from the Mount Zion Baptist Church choir and a song from former Miss America Caressa Cameron Jackson that brought some audience members to tears. Shirley Johnson, who organized the event, thanked Kaine and Warner for their support of President Barack Obama. “You thank God for men like them that have been able to work with our president in the White House,” she said.
Kaine said some of his colleagues have questioned commemorating something as horrible as African slaves arriving to America in chains. But Kaine counters that he goes to a church where the congregation talks about a flood that killed nearly every living creature and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. “I go to a place that commemorates, that reflects upon and that celebrates the fact that pain is a reality,” Kaine said. “Pain is a reality, but it isn’t the whole story.”
He referenced prominent African–Americans including former Fredericksburg Mayor the Rev. Lawrence Davies, who had introduced Kaine. The tragedy and the triumph needs to be told, he said.
“What would American politics be without Mayor Davies, or Barbara Jordan, or Shirley Chisholm or President Barack Obama?” he asked to cheers. “What would America be? We wouldn’t be able to recognize it.”
