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In a rare post-election interview, Wright spoke to The Washington Post about his life and his church's history after preaching an evening sermon at the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Northeast Washington, the first of three nights he was to appear before the congregation.
Wright's very public falling out with Obama during the 2008 campaign seemed like water under the bridge Wednesday, as Wright expressed concern over how the president has been treated by the media since being elected.
"It is unrealistic to think that one person can change the mess that this country has gotten into, but to pick on him is like picking on one of my kids," Wright said. "I have been knowing him for 20 years.
"I have not stopped loving him because of what the press did, and to see him beat up on because of things he is not responsible for is painful."
Wright said he didn't expect to speak directly with Obama again until "he is out of the White House."
Wright became politically radioactive after YouTube videos of his sermons at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, in which he called on blacks to sing "God damn America" and said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost," went viral online in early 2008. On Wednesday night, though, he left the dashiki and fiery rhetoric of those videos behind for a business suit and preaching from the 23rd Psalm in a measured tone.
The YouTube videos focused damaging attention on his family, Wright said, and especially on his youngest daughter, Jamila Wright, and a granddaughter.
"The day I took Jamila to campus, Fox News was on the sidewalk taking my picture. My granddaughter got into a fistfight at FAMU [Florida A&M University] because people only know the press narrative about Jeremiah Wright," he said. "The press didn't care what they did to my family. They ruined their senior year in high school. They were at the senior prom, the graduation, waiting on something to try to destroy Obama."
Wright was in town to preach and sign copies of his book, "A Sankofa Moment: The History of Trinity United Church of Christ," offering his perspective of the origins and growth of a church that grew from 87 to more than 8,000 members during his tenure. Wright was pastor from April 1972 until May 2008, when he officially retired.
Even though he spoke measuredly, Wright's assessment of the origins of the church could raise the eyebrows of some United Church of Christ elders.
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SOURCE: The Washington Post
Hamil R. Harris
