Last week we heard from Theodore M. Hesburgh.  Hesburgh, a founding member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King), wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal chastising Democrats for failing to support the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.

This week the acting president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, spoke at a Miami rally of 5,500 in support of Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship for low income children.

I wonder if anyone is listening?

“It is no coincidence that the first African-American to live in the White House is a man with an Ivy League degree, and just last summer President Obama made a powerful point about our history. There’s a reason, our President said, the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools.  There’s a reason, he said, that Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown.  There’s a reason, he said, why the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob. It’s because, President Obama told us, there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.

I say to you today that the Tax Credit Scholarship program is one of the keys we use to unlock that potential. It is one way we can reach some of those children who go to bed hungry at night. It is one way we show that an empty pocketbook doesn’t have to mean an empty bookshelf – that all our learning tools need to be on the table for all our children.

I am here today as a messenger of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I am here to proudly proclaim that the organization created by Dr. King believes that a scholarship for low-income children is one way to break the cycle and close the gap. I am here, standing before this inspiring sea of hopeful faces, to announce that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference endorses Tax Credit Scholarships and endorses the bill this year that will expand them. This is our future. God bless you all.”

(HT: Matt Ladner)