Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to descendants of some of the most prominent civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s and other seminal historical figures, who gathered Tuesday at the White House, some meeting in the same room for the first time.
The families of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Emmett Till, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, among others, were expected to attend.
Harris praised the descendants of “extraordinary American heroes” who she said embody the promise of the nation and the Constitution.
“They passed the baton to us,” Harris said Tuesday.
Stephen K. Benjamin, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, followed Harris to recap the administration’s initiatives, including an executive order related to police responsibility And Joe Biden signs the law to make June 19 a federal holiday.
The Descendants, as the group calls itself, paid homage to their family heritage by celebrating the Biden-Harris administration’s Black History Month event.
Joshua Jordison, one of the behind-the-scenes coordinators for The Descendants, said discussions about bringing this group together began several years ago.
“It was amazing that a lot of them had never met,” he said a few days before the event.
Invitations were sent to other notable families, organizers said, although some were unable to attend due to their schedules and other factors.
“We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us,” said Kenneth B. Morris Jr., a descendant of Frederick Douglass and his first wife, Anna Murray Douglass. “The torch of freedom has been passed to us.”
Prior to the event, Morris told NBC News that this historic event was just the beginning for these families, whose goal is to “catalyze transformative and positive societal change among the most important challenges facing our country “.
Morris is also a descendant of Booker T. Washington, he said. The Washington and Douglass families married in the 1940s.
Through the nonprofit he co-founded, Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, Morris’s work and that of his mother, Nettie Washington Douglass, has focused on anti-racism and human rights. But he stressed that while he helped organize the reunion, it wasn’t about a single person or family. “It’s an equal collaboration. We all come together,” he said.
Ernestine “Tina” Martin Wyatt is a great-great-great-niece of Harriet Tubman. The Washington, D.C., resident hosts an annual Harriet Tubman Day celebration in the District to educate the public about the contributions of her famous ancestor. She said she was “thrilled” to meet the descendants of her fellow freedom fighters.
Nearly 100 other guests were expected. Morris and Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., spoke at the event.
Beyond the official meeting, a series of activities for descendant families will take place in the neighborhood on Tuesday and Wednesday. Their itinerary is expected to include stops at the U.S. Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Supreme Court, and a tour of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as dinners and group dialogue opportunities .
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