Brown Can Stick Around

One of the highlights for me from an amazing inaugural day was the benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery. Here is a guy who helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King and led the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery - a true soldier of the Civil Rights Movement - leading more than 2 million in prayer at the inauguration of the country's first black president. Extraordinary.

He even drew laughs from the crowd and President Obama with these lines: "We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."

The passage riffs on a great tune by Chicago bluesman Big Bill Broonzy called "Black, Brown and White":



Here is the full benediction from Rev. Lowery: