Obama marks Memorial Day with tribute at Arlington

President Obama sought to avoid a racial controversy on his first Memorial Day in office by sending wreaths to separate memorials for Confederate soldiers and for blacks who fought against them during the Civil War.

Last week, a group of about 60 professors petitioned the White House, asking the first black U.S. president to break tradition and not memorialize military members from the Confederacy, the group of Southern states that supported slavery.

Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, a customary presidential undertaking on Memorial Day. He also had one sent to the Confederate Memorial there, a traditional practice but not well publicized. In addition, Obama took the unprecedented step of sending a wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington’s historically black U Street neighborhood.

Recognizing that memorial -- to the more than 200,000 blacks who fought for the North during the Civil War -- had been mentioned as a compromise in recent days.

In brief remarks after he laid the wreath and observed a moment of silence at Arlington, Obama saluted the men and women of America’s fighting forces, both living and dead, as “the best of America.”

“Why in an age when so many have acted only in pursuit of narrowest self-interest have the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of this generation volunteered all that they have on behalf of others?” he said. “Why have they been willing to bear the heaviest burden?”

“Whatever it is, they felt some tug. They answered a call. They said, ‘I’ll go.’ That is why they are the best of America,” Obama said. “That is what separates them from those who have not served in uniform, their extraordinary willingness to risk their lives for people they never met.”

The president, who did not serve in the military, noted his grandfather’s Army service during World War II and his status as a father. Unlike many in the audience, Obama said he doesn’t know what it’s like to walk into battle or lose a child.

“But I do know this. I am humbled to be the commander in chief of the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” he said to applause.

Among those who signed the petition asking Obama not to memorialize Confederate troops was 1960s radical William Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ayers helped found the radical group the Weathermen, which carried out bombings at the Pentagon and the Capitol. Republicans tried to link Obama and Ayers during the presidential campaign because they lived in the same neighborhood and served on a charity board together.

Men and women in uniform saluted Obama’s motorcade as it entered Arlington National Cemetery.

Before the ceremony, the president had a private breakfast at the White House with people who have lost loved ones in war.