Obama's Speech Spurs Dialogue on Race, Religion

March 22, 2008

Author: Paul Eakins

Source: Press Telegram

http://www2.presstelegram.com/news/ci_8666950

Before moving to California in 2004, Elyssa Taylor-Stewart attended the same South Side Chicago church as Barack Obama and listened to the same sermons that since have enveloped the Democratic presidential candidate in controversy.

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s criticism of America at Trinity United Church of Christ has shocked and outraged many people. Obama responded last week to his longtime pastor's comments with a speech on the nation's struggles with race and inequality that some have likened to the greatest speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or President Kennedy.

Many Long Beach community leaders and residents also applauded Obama's speech and said that many of its themes, such as how far the nation still has yet to go to achieve racial equality, ring true.