August 28, 2013 

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March on Washington Created Legacy of Opportunity
Senator Tim Scott
The State
August 28, 2013

A little more than two years before I was born, more than 200,000 people traveled to Washington to make their voices heard. An appeal for a better future was made, culminating in Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

 

The lasting legacy of the march, and of Dr. King in particular, is impossible to summarize in a newspaper column. But perhaps we can look at it through a quotation from Genesis, which, not-coincidentally, serves as the text for a memorial marker at the old Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.:

 

“They said one to another, behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him … and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” …

 

When people ask what motivates me or drives me to serve the public good, I have a simple yet complex answer: I am living my mother’s American Dream. That dream was strengthened by the efforts of Dr. King, Congressman John Lewis and the countless other civil rights leaders who gave so much to build a better future. And nowhere were those efforts more clear than in the messages that came out of the March on Washington.

 

An immediate example of a critical challenge we face is reforming our educational systems. As Congress moves to reauthorize primary and secondary education programs this year, we need to ask ourselves the seemingly obvious question: What is best for our children, for their future? I like to imagine it is the same line of thinking those who marched on Washington had in mind….

 

Everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed. Every parent deserves the chance to see his or her children grow up in a brighter world. And all men are created equal.

 

As Dr. King wrote in April 1963: “We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.” That goal remains, and in my role representing the people of the great state of South Carolina in the U.S. Senate, I work to move that needle forward every day.

 

Read the full piece that ran in today’s edition of The State at http://www.thestate.com/2013/08/28/2945100/sen-tim-scott-march-on-washington.html

 

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Senator Tim Scott represents the great state of South Carolina in the United States Senate.
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