Controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, infamous during the 2008 presidential campaign because of his incendiary political rhetoric while Barack Obama was his parishioner, came to a suburban Northern Virginia church to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Mostly avoiding controversial statements during his January 14 remarks, Wright emphasized the continuity of black people’s history.
“You mean to tell me that Africans didn’t do nothin’ before slavery?” Wright humorously quipped at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, which hosted a black tie banquet for him. “God’s presence was with us before slavery, at the origins of civilization. God’s presence was with us during slavery—from Harriet Tubman through Nat Turner. God’s presence delivered us from slavery. After being free we did not say ‘Thank Abraham Lincoln almighty,’ we said, ‘Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’…Tell them about God’s presence in the valleys, and in the victories.”
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