ATLANTA — Speaking for a generation that will live longest with whatever fallout this tumultuous year ultimately brings, Martin Luther King Jr.'s granddaughter asserted Friday at the March on Washington that the youth "will fulfill my grandfather's dream."
Yolanda Renee King, 12, channeled her grandfather's voice and provided a sweeping vision of what her generation can accomplish.
"We are going to be the generation that dismantles systemic racism once and for all, now and forever," she said. "We are going to be the generation that calls a halt to police brutality and gun violence once and for all, now and forever. We are going to be the generation that reverses climate change and saves our planet once and for all, now and forever. And we are going to be the generation that ends poverty here in America, the wealthiest nation on Earth, once and for all, now and forever."
The March on Washington happening Friday in the nation's capital is a nod to the original 1963 March on Washington, which also occurred on Aug. 28 that year. It comes amid perhaps the most significant year for anti-racist activism since the Civil Rights Movement itself.
Yolanda King, the daughter of Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters, who live in Atlanta, noted that her grandfather had "predicted this very moment," when the struggle for equity would move into a new phase.
"The first phase was the Civil Rights (Movement), and the new phase is genuine equality," she said.
Friday was not her first time speaking on a big stage. She also memorably spoke at the March for our Lives in Washington two years ago, when young people of her generation gathered to demand action on gun violence in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
This time in Washington, she was part of another generational call for action.
"My generation has already taken to the streets peacefully, and with masks and socially distanced, to protest racism, and I want to ask the young people here to join me in pledging that we have only just begun to fight," she said. "And that we will be the generation that moves from 'me' to 'we'."
She noted the great changes that have taken place in even just the two short years since that last mass demonstration by the youth.
"I didn't know what would hit us in 2020 - a pandemic that shut our schools and put our young lives on hold, more killings of unarmed Black people by police, attacks on our right to vote, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression that we learned about in school, and more extreme weather than ever before," she said.
But she noted, perhaps prophetically, "great challenges produce great leaders."
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