Television legend Dick Van Dyke endorsed Kamala Harris for president by reading a speech he delivered at a 1964 civil rights event alongside Martin Luther King.
In a video titled “VOTE!! @KamalaHarris,” posted Monday, the 98-year-old star of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Mary Poppins” and “Bye Bye Birdie” recalled reading the remarks, written by “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling, to “some 60,000 people within the Coliseum in L.A.”
“Hatred will not be the norm. Prejudice will not be the norm. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy, scapegoating, none of those are the transcendent facet of the human personality. They’re diseases. They’re. They cancers of the soul,” Van Dyke read, partially.
He went on, “There shall be moments of violence and expressions of hatred and [an] ugly echo of intolerance, but these are the clinging vestiges of a decayed past, not the harbingers of the higher, cleaner future. To those that tell us the inequality of the human animal is a needed evil, we must respond by simply saying that first, it’s evil, but not needed.”
After concluding the remarks, Van Dyke said, “1964 — loads’s happened. Not a lot as Martin Luther dreamed of, however it’s a start. Thanks, and God bless.”
Van Dyke supported Bernie Sanders within the 2020 presidential primary and spoke at one in all the senator’s campaign events. Earlier this 12 months, he publicly backed Joe Biden before the president dropped out of the race.
Van Dyke told The Hollywood Reporter in June that he believed Donald Trump is “disturbed,” partially because he’s “never seen him laugh.”
Watch Van Dyke’s video below.
