Attorney General Lynch: ‘We have always pushed forward’
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in her final speech as head of the Justice Department, praised the work of the Obama administration to advance the dream of justice and said worries of difficult days ahead should be a call for action, not despair.
Speaking in Birmingham, Alabama, just days before leaving office with the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, Lynch praised the work of President Barack Obama and acknowledged — without mentioning Trump by name— some voters’ anxieties for the future.
“I know that while our accomplishments should make us proud, they must not make us complacent. We cannot stop. We have to work. I know that in our pursuit of a brighter future, we still face headwinds. We still face oppositions. We see it. Waves of hatred, waves of intolerance and injustice that are still blowing in this country, and they seem to grow stronger the more that we achieve, Lynch said.
Lynch took the pulpit of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church for a celebration ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The church was the site of a 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four girls just weeks after King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. The Obama administration this week named the church and other Birmingham civil rights landmarks as a national monument.