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Obama “choked up” over King speech

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama says he choked up while practising a campaign speech about Martin Luther King Jr. But the President-elect promises to “try to keep it together” when he is sworn in Tuesday.

He also said when his family read quotes from Abraham Lincoln, his 10-year-old daughter said her dad’s precedent-making inaugural address had “better be good.”

In a CNN interview taped on Friday, Mr. Obama talked in more personal terms than usual about the racial and emotional dimensions of his election. “If you think about the journey this country has made, then it can’t help but stir your heart,” he told CNN’s John King. “Obviously it’s an extraordinary personal moment,” he added, but it carries far-reaching social and political implications.

“You can think about what Washington, D.C., was like 50 years ago or 60 years ago,” when the city was segregated, said Mr. Obama, “and the notion that I now will be standing there and sworn in as the 44th President, I think is something that hopefully our children take for granted. But our grandparents, I think, are still stunned by it, and it’s a remarkable moment.”

Asked about the deep emotion stof African Americansn, Mr. Obama said, “Well, I’m going to try to keep it together.” But at the Democratic convention in Denver last August, he said, “there was a moment at the end of my convention speech where I talk about Dr. King and what he accomplished. And the first time we practised it, I had to stop. I started choking up, because, you know, when you start thinking about is not just your own personal journey. But you think about all the women who walked instead of riding the bus, out in Montgomery and Birmingham, and what a moment like this would mean to them.”— AP

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