Obama celebrates black history Month at the White House

The president, who met with more than a dozen civil rights leaders earlier in the day, turned the seriousness on, touching on how important it was that young people carry the torch in the present-day movement. During Thursday’s meeting, the president sat between Brittany Packnett, an activist from Ferguson, Mo., and iconic civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.). He commented on the intergenerational moment during the Black History Month reception.

“What’s so inspiring about these young people and their generation is that they don’t see black history as a relic; it’s not something to study in a book,” Obama said. “They don’t see themselves as distant from that history — they are participants, making history. It’s alive, something that we have the power and the responsibility to shape and to wield.”

Obama also discussed the history of African-Americans in the U.S. and in the White House.

“From our earliest days, black history has been American history,” Obama said. “We’re the slaves who quarried the stone to build this White House, the soldiers who fought for our nation’s independence, who fought to hold this union together, who fought for freedom of others around the world.”

A leader from Black Lives Matter Chicago respectfully declined an invitation to Thursday’s talk, writing in an op-ed on Truthout that the gathering was a photo-op that didn’t address the real problems.

“I could not, with any integrity, participate in such a sham that would only serve to legitimize the false narrative that the government is working to end police brutality and the institutional racism that fuels it,” Aislinn Pulley wrote.