Keith Strange | The News
Sixties Civil Rights leader Clarence Henderson urged members of the Surry County TEA Party Patriots to stand up and make their voices heard. “America doesn’t need to be transformed, it needs to be restored,” he said.
DOBSON — One thing is for sure — time has done little to quench the fires of social agitation burning in Clarence Henderson.
One of the youths who helped shape the Civil Rights Movement by participating in the Greensboro Woolworth’s Sit-In in 1960, Henderson brought that same spirit to The Depot Tuesday night as he addressed the Surry County TEA Party Patriots.
A standing-room-only crowd was on hand to hear his message, which was simply that America needs to return to the values instilled by the Founding Fathers.
“I do not stand before you by accident,” he said as a standing ovation subsided, “I stand before you through divine intervention.”
For Henderson, America has become broken by the leadership in Washington.
“America is a very strange country, because we change definitions too many times,” he said. “Now we have a new definition for marriage in this country.”
No matter how man tries to define marriage, “God has said marriage is between a man and a woman.”
“He said it in Genesis, and by the time I got to Revelations, it still hadn’t changed,” Henderson added to laughter and applause.
The Civil Rights leader also said President Obama has, unfortunately, delivered on his promise, albeit not as expected by voters.
“Obama said he wants to transform America, and most people didn’t know what he meant,” Henderson said. “We now have a system where instead of the government protecting our rights, its taking them away from us. Healthcare isn’t a right, it’s a service. There is nowhere in the Constitution that said it’s a right. We’ve gone from being the land of opportunity to a land of entitlement where they’re actually advertising that you can go on welfare.”
The solution, according to Henderson, is for the American people to take back the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and promised by the country’s Founding Fathers.
“In order for us to reckon with (defending a free and independent America), we have to recognize that the only hope for America is God,” he said. “We must defend the free and independent America our founders gave us.”
And in order to do that, people need to stand up and demand the return to the country’s original values, he said.
“If we are going to defend that America, we must defend the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights,” he said. “We must remain one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
“We must reinvigorate the spirit that made America great,” Henderson added, quoting what he called the most important sentence in the country’s history:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
Reach Keith Strange at kstrange@civitasmedia.com or 719-1929.
And if we stand up and demand a return to the country's original values, would not that mean taking away women's right to vote and allowing some human beings the right to own other human beings and keep them in bondage?
And about Judeo-Christian values? Clearly those are in conflict on many, many topics; how do we sort that out? We also have Bhuddists, muslims, and many other well-established religions whose membership includes well-respected American citizens. Many have and continue to contribute to our society, our culture and our institutions. What about them and their values?
It just seems that we need to be preaching life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, along with personal accountability, respect, and tolerance of others. And we need to be internalizing our values and acting upon them, rather than trying to make sure that only those who are just like us and have our exact values are acceptable.
Thank you for coverage of our event.
Linda Dollyhigh