Bernice King is glad Trump’s inauguration falls on her father’s holiday. She sees it as a wake-up call
Share:
Civil rights leaders are worried Trump’s administration could roll back the rights of US residents. The youngest child of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr didn’t want Donald Trump to become the next president — but Dr Bernice King believes Trump’s inauguration taking place on the same day as the federal holiday honoring her father is a small win.
![[Chief Justice John Roberts, right, reads the oath of office to the former president at the ceremonial swearing-in at the US Capitol in 2013. Obama used King’s Bible in the ceremony]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2021/01/19/05/Biden_Inauguration_Roberts_21825.jpg)
“I’m glad that if it was going to happen, it happened on the King holiday, because Dr King is still speaking to us,” she told The Independent. She sees the January 20 event as a wake-up call for the country and an opportunity to stand up to the incoming administration’s charged agenda items.
“We cannot retreat or recoil,” King said. “We have to commit ourselves to continuing the mission of protecting freedom, justice and democracy in the spirit of my father.”. King had been excited about the prospect of seeing Vice President Kamala Harris, who is of Black and South Asian heritage, become the country’s first female president on MLK Day.
![[Protesters cheer at the Women's March on Washington during the first full day of Donald Trump's presidency in 2017]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2023/05/12/05/Trump_Verdict_Women_98631.jpg)
She’d hoped the US would elect someone who embodied the values her father did. Not “someone who’s spewing hateful rhetoric, who’s not been very kind-hearted and whose policies are not humane in their approach,” as she described the president-elect.
She later added: “A Trump win could potentially set in motion a perilous and oppressive presidential administration that would undermine and deny the hard-fought battle for civil and human rights for which my parents and so many others sacrificed.”.
