Washington (AFP) – Joe Biden will travel to South Carolina on Sunday, his last full day as US president, where he will mark a national holiday honoring civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. Biden will visit Royal Missionary Baptist Church in Charleston, where he will attend services and speak about “the continued fight to make Dr King’s dream a reality,” a White House official said. He will also attend an event at the city’s International African American Museum.
Monday is a national holiday in the United States honoring King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who advocated for the use of non-violent resistance in the fight for equal rights for Black Americans. He was assassinated in 1968. Monday is also the day Donald Trump will be sworn in to succeed Biden as president.
The White House said Biden’s “last official trip as president…will continue his long relationship with the state of South Carolina.” The state was pivotal in Biden’s path to securing the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020. After lackluster showings in the initial nomination contests, Biden won a convincing victory in South Carolina’s primary, an affirmation that he retained significant backing among Black voters.
Charleston is also the home of the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where a white shooter killed nine Black worshippers in 2015. Biden attended the funeral for Emanuel AME’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney, following the mass shooting perpetrated by a white gunman who had written a racist manifesto before the killings. In a 2024 address at Emanuel AME, Biden said he would not have been elected president without the support of the congregation and “the Black community of South Carolina.”
© 2024 AFP
