Former US Senator Harris Wofford (D-PA), helped to launch the Peace Corps under the Kennedy Administration and played a key role in crafting legislation that led to AmeriCorps.
From the perspective of four-score-and-one years, I feel lucky beyond measure to have this new leader who can touch our souls -- and move our minds and bodies into action. I haven’t felt like this since the days of high hopes with John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Barack Obama has picked up the torch that they lit.In the 1950s and ‘60s I was fortunate to serve in the White House with President Kennedy, to campaign for Robert Kennedy, and to work – and walk –with Martin Luther King. And I’ll never forget how students were in the forefront of the civil rights struggle, facing hoses, starting sit-ins, and going to jail. As they were out in front in the protests against the war in Vietnam – and how the enthusiastic response of students helped to bring the Peace Corps into existence.Before I introduce Barack, I have one story to tell – of another day on another college campus when a dynamic young presidential candidate came together with a group of college students and together they made history.Forty-six years ago, on a cold fall night in Ann Arbor, Michigan, some 10,000 people, most of them university students, waited till after 1 a.m. to welcome John Kennedy. Kennedy didn’t have a prepared speech. He spoke briefly, from the steps of the Student Union, putting questions to the students: “How many of you are willing to spend years in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? To spend your days in Ghana.” “Our future,” he said, “depends on your willingness to do that.”With loud, long applause, the students signaled their readiness. But they didn’t leave it at that. About 250 students organized as “Americans Committed to World Responsibility” and circulated petitions saying that if Kennedy started an overseas volunteer program, they were ready to go. When Kennedy heard that nearly a thousand students had signed the petition and had a long scroll to present to him, he turned to his staff and said “let’s give a major speech proposing a Peace Corps.” He did so six days before the election to a large enthusiastic audience in San Francisco. The press gave it favorable national attention, and Kennedy repeated the promise in his election eve address.Kennedy won by some 100,000 votes, and it is probable that far more than that number were swayed by his bold new idea. It’s even more likely that if the Michigan students had not undertaken their initiative, Kennedy would not have made that campaign promise, or made it a priority in his new administration. With their thousand student scroll, the students were not only there at the creation; they played a key part in the creating.Kennedy’s Peace Corps never reached the size and impact that he and we hoped for. We lost that opportunity, but the door to great new opportunities to serve, at home and abroad, is being opened again today—at this college campus. Are you ready to be part of history?Barack says that the amazing response of students in Iowa and around the country helps to fire him up. But if you follow his remarkable trajectory in life you know that he does not need to be stirred to action. He is ready for action to change the course of our country and to change the world. He needs you to help him see it through not just this election but also in the new administration. He is ready. Are you?The country needs you not only to answer his call to action but to be creative, in your own right to discover the best ways to serve and to build a better country and a better world. And we need Barack Obama -- to become the next President of the United States.
