Passionate Obama hails black history
US President Barack Obama paid passionate tribute to black civil rights trailblazers on the centennial of the NAACP, but said a "new mindset" was necessary to achieve a post-racial America.
The first black president in US history received a thunderous welcome at a dinner Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded after the abolition of slavery but when segregation "was a way of life (and) when lynchings were all too common."
The president paid homage to civil rights heroes, such as scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and the slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr for overcoming "the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation."
"Because of what they did, we are a more perfect union," Obama told a packed hotel ballroom.
"Because Jim Crow laws were overturned, black CEOs today run Fortune 500 companies. Because civil rights laws were passed, black mayors, governors and members of Congress serve in places where they might once have been unable to vote.
"And because ordinary people made the civil rights movement their own, I made a trip to Springfield a couple years ago -- where (Civil War-era US president Abraham) Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged -- and began the journey that has led me here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America."
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The first black president in US history received a thunderous welcome at a dinner Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded after the abolition of slavery but when segregation "was a way of life (and) when lynchings were all too common."
The president paid homage to civil rights heroes, such as scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and the slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr for overcoming "the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation."
"Because of what they did, we are a more perfect union," Obama told a packed hotel ballroom.
"Because Jim Crow laws were overturned, black CEOs today run Fortune 500 companies. Because civil rights laws were passed, black mayors, governors and members of Congress serve in places where they might once have been unable to vote.
"And because ordinary people made the civil rights movement their own, I made a trip to Springfield a couple years ago -- where (Civil War-era US president Abraham) Lincoln once lived, and race riots once raged -- and began the journey that has led me here tonight as the 44th President of the United States of America."