Granddaughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. calls on her generation to 'restore the dream' at 63rd anniversary of March on Washington
Yolanda King said hers "will be the generation that protects the right to vote."
The 18-year-old granddaughter of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called on her generation to "pick up the baton" and "restore the dream" while addressing a crowd on Friday outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington.
"My grandfather was 34 years old when he stood at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and told America about his dream. I never met him. I never met my grandmother, Coretta Scott King," Yolanda Renee King said. "But I know something they both understood: a dream without work is just a wish."
The legendary civil rights leader delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The speech, which was televised live across the country at the time, became one of the most acclaimed in U.S. history.
He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39.
"The people who marched here 63 years ago did not just give us a finished dream. They gave us a baton, and a baton is something you do not just simply frame and hang on a wall, you run with it," Yolanda King said. "You were asking us to continue, so we will. We will pick up the baton."
She joined by her parents Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King on the stage.
"We will restore the dream when voting rights are weakened. We will restore the dream when hatred tries to divide us," Yolanda King said. "And when somebody tells us the problems are too big, the divisions are too deep, the system is too broken, and our generation is too young, we will tell them, watch us."
The incoming Columbia University freshman called on her generation to exercise their democratic rights and said that at a time when voting rights are under attack, hers "will be the generation that protects the right to vote."
Lawmakers and national civil flights leaders echoed her call to protect the right to vote, as the issue took center stage on Friday's March on Washington.
Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, a New York Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, called on Americans to vote and to fight efforts to restrict those rights ahead of the midterms in November.
"It has been four months since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, opening the door to a coordinated attack on the Black political power and fair representation across the South," she said.
Clarke's comments referenced the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in April, where the conservative majority struck down Louisiana's congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, dealing a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The ruling effectively raised the bar for challenges to election maps that limit the equal opportunity of minority voters to elect candidates of their choosing, even if lawmakers did not have deliberate intent to discriminate.
The Supreme Court on Monday moved to allow President Donald Trump to implement key portions of his executive order on mail-in voting ahead of the November midterm election. On Thursday night, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing key provisions of the new rule restricting mail-in voting.
"This is an outright power grab," Clarke said, reflecting on the Supreme Court decisions. "It is about silencing Black voices, dismantling majority black districts, and rigging the map in their favor as elections are already underway."
NAACP President Derrick Johnson addressed the crowd at the march on Friday as well.
"We recognize that the black vote is the moral compass of this nation," he said. "In this moment, the rallying cry must be, 'When we vote, we win.' Because at the end of the day, the currency in this democracy is our vote."
Martin Luther King III, who also spoke at the march on Friday, told ABC News in a statement on Friday that is father "understood that progress is never inevitable."
"We are marching today because voting rights and civil rights are once again under serious threat, and we all have a responsibility to meet this moment with courage and conviction," he said. "We cannot simply commemorate what was achieved in 1963. We must fight to defend that progress, confront the ongoing setbacks, and continue striving to create the Beloved Community my father envisioned."
ABC News' Sabina Ghebremedhin and Synai Ferrell contributed to this report.
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