In DNC Acceptance Speech for Presidency Biden Talks of ‘light’

Daily Democratic National Convention Opinion Coverage in Sepia

Friday, August 21, 2020 Day 4 Coverage

Joe Biden last night began his party’s acceptance speech for the presidency with an homage to black leadership and an allusion to luminosity.

On black leadership he quoted Ella Baker, an unsung Civil Rights Movement strategist who was a functionary in the upper echelons of the the Reverend Martin Luther King’s South Christian Leadership Conference, which is credited for changing the racial regime of the South and leading to the demise Jim Crow. Baker is also known historically as the inspiration of SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, where she mentored the late John Lewis, Dianne Nash, Bob Moses and Stokely Carmichael. Baker’s spiritual ingenuity and grit moved our nation toward freedom more than we recognize.

Biden quoted Baker saying: “Give people light and they will find a way.” It was a fitting platform from which Biden opined about the “American darkness” into which President Trump has led the nation. Biden referenced economic malaise and the COVID-19 pandemic as his proof of Trump’s incompetence at managing within the cauldron of country’s crisis. “The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger…