MLK's political heirs pursue his dream, theirs

updated 3:41 p.m. ET Feb. 9, 2007

CHICAGO - Roger Wilkins was there at the dawn of the civil rights movement. He was there, fighting for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, marching in Washington with the Rev. Martin Luther King and so many other black heroes.

Barack Obama wasn’t there. He was just a child in 1965.

But that’s OK with Wilkins. In Obama and a new generation of black political leaders — a generation that never fought off Bull Connor’s dogs, or desegregated lunch counters — Wilkins sees a promise fulfilled.

“They are what we wanted to happen,” said Wilkins, a professor at George Mason University, as Obama prepared to launch his presidential campaign Saturday.

“You’re getting some of the real fruits of the civil rights movement. I don’t view them as in opposition to us, but people born in 1961 see the world differently than people born in 1931 — and it should be that way.”

New generation of black leaders
Obama, 45, offers a portfolio — lawyer, educator, state lawmaker, U.S. senator — that reflects both a shifting landscape and a changing of the guard for black political leaders in America.

Decades ago, many black politicians shared similar roots: They studied at historically black colleges, became ministers, teachers and activists and made their names fighting racial injustice — braving death threats, police dogs and water hoses along the way.

These days, many black political leaders have similar résumés: They have Ivy League degrees and have worked as lawyers and legislators. They know their way around the towers of high finance and can raise money everywhere from Hollywood to Wall Street.

Their ranks include Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., a former Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School graduate and Stanford football star; Deval Patrick, the new governor of Massachusetts who was the Justice Department’s top civil rights official in the Clinton administration and counsel for Texaco and Coca-Cola; and Artur Davis, an Alabama congressman and Harvard law graduate, who like his former classmate, Obama, is eyeing higher office.

“What you’re getting is black people who come into politics the way most of the white guys do — you’re interested in public affairs, you go to law school, you do some local stuff, you run for office,” Wilkins said.

Add to that “juniors” who’ve taken up the family business. They include U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., the 41-year-old son of the civil rights activist and two-time presidential candidate, and Harold Ford Jr., who followed in his father’s footsteps to the U.S. House. After losing a Senate race in Tennessee last year, Ford, 36, recently took the helm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Both men, incidentally, are products of St. Albans School, where Washington’s mandarin families have been grooming their sons for leadership for decades. (Former Vice President Al Gore also is a graduate.)

This younger generation is not without its own civil rights bona fides: Jackson Jr. — born while his father was in Alabama demonstrating for voting rights — spent his 21st birthday in jail after being arrested in an anti-apartheid protest. Obama was a community organizer registering minority voters in Chicago. Patrick worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

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