[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[September 16, 1994]
[Pages 1564-1566]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1564]]


Remarks Honoring African-American Veterans of World War II
September 16, 1994

    Thank you very much, Congressman Rangel, Secretary Brown, Chairman 
Mfume, other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and to all of 
the veterans of our Armed Forces who are here, to your family members 
and friends, my fellow Americans. I am proud to be here to honor the 
African-American veterans of World War II.
    This is a distinguished generation in the history of African-
American military service. But you belong to a legacy older than the 
Declaration of Independence, one that includes the legendary service of 
the Massachusetts 54th in our Civil War, the Buffalo Soldiers in the 
West, the 92d Division in World War I.
    Congressman Rangel, I'm sure most of you know, is a decorated 
veteran of the Korean war, and he had a son who served in the United 
States Marine Corps. I want to recognize his service and that of the 
other veterans of the Congressional Black Caucus: Congressmen Blackwell, 
Bishop, Clay, Conyers, Dellums, Dixon, Jefferson, Rush, Stokes, Scott, 
and Towns.
    I also want to acknowledge our Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Jesse 
Brown. I'm grateful to have him in my Cabinet not only because he is the 
first African-American Secretary of Veterans Affairs but because he is a 
genuine hero of our military service and someone, as Congressman Rangel 
said, who has been a Secretary of Veterans Affairs and a secretary for 
America's veterans. I was telling him on the way over here, I had just 
gotten another one of his letters reminding me that there was something 
else I should have done that I had not yet done for the veterans of this 
country. [Laughter] I told him, when we had our little interview before 
I became President, that I expected him not only to be loyal to me but 
loyal to you and that as long as he were honest and straightforward with 
me, he could fulfill both loyalties. I can honestly say he is doing his 
best to follow my admonition. [Laughter]
    I want to note that today is also POW/MIA Recognition Day, a day to 
recognize those Americans who were held prisoner of war or those who 
remain unaccounted for, the missing who never received their proper 
welcome home. They are not forgotten. The United States stands firmly 
resolved to help their young loved ones find the answers they deserve. 
And even today, we are working hard and investing a significant amount 
of money in that endeavor in Southeast Asia.
    For decades, African-American veterans were missing in our Nation's 
memories of World War II. For too long, you were soldiers in the 
shadows, forgotten heroes. Today it should be clear to you, all of you, 
you are forgotten no more. I'm very proud of your service to our 
country. You've protected and expanded the freedoms that all the rest of 
us enjoy today. Our Nation's debt to you can never be fully repaid, but 
we can certainly honor your service, as we do today.
    Americans endured much during World War II, the terrible loss of 
lives, the separation of families and loved ones, the interruptions of 
life on the homefront. All our people felt some of that. But no group of 
Americans endured what African-Americans endured in uniform. You had to 
win the right to fight the enemy we faced in common. You endured the 
indignities of double standards for black troops, the put-downs, the 
segregated units and bases, some of which gave you less freedom to move 
than German prisoners of war. You defended America with no guarantees 
that your own freedom would be defended in return.
    I'm just reading the new book by Doris Kearns Goodwin about World 
War II and President and Mrs. Roosevelt, war on the homefront, war 
abroad. She was constantly urging her husband to try to do something 
about the double standard accorded to African-American people in the 
military and demanded, among other things, that people who wanted to 
enlist in the Navy ought to be able to do something besides work in the 
mess.
    We've come a long way since then, largely because of you and many 
tens of thousands like you who disproved the false stereotypes, who 
showed that American troops were, are, and always will be the best 
trained, the best prepared fighting force in history, regardless of the 
color of their skin. In fact, units comprised entirely or mostly of 
African-Americans performed remarkably, groups honored today such as the

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famed Tuskegee Airmen. This is something--[applause]--to the Tuskegee 
Airmen, stand up there. When I was in Europe recently to celebrate the 
50th anniversary of the liberation of Italy and Rome and D-Day, I was 
escorted on part of my journey by a Tuskegee Airman from my home State 
who told me what is now in my notes here--[laughter]--that Tuskegee 
Airmen flew 1,578 combat missions and they were the only fighter group 
in the Mediterranean, black or white, never to lose a single, solitary 
bomber under escort.
    The Red Ball Express, they landed at Normandy in the wake of D-Day 
and rushed materiel to supply the rapid Allied advance. The U.S. Army's 
761st Tank Battalion, the first black armored unit to see combat in 
World War II--are they here? [Applause] Thank you. They fought bravely 
at the Battle of the Bulge and did so while in combat for 183 days in a 
row.
    In Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, or stateside, in the Army, the 
Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, more than a million 
African-American men and women helped to win this century's greatest 
fight for freedom. In helping to show the world what America was 
against, you helped to show America what America is for. You helped to 
liberate all of us from segregation. The civil rights marches were 
already underway every time you marched in a uniform. And today, at the 
end of the cold war, we should do everything we can to pay back the debt 
we owe, to move forward as a nation as you helped America to move 
forward after World War II.
    Most of you were born in the years after World War I, a time when 
America came home from victory and retreated from the world, a time in 
which insecurity arose. As Hitler's hate spread overseas, the Red Scare 
and the Ku Klux Klan grew up here at home. But after World War II, we 
avoided a lot of those mistakes. We turned our old adversaries into new 
allies. We brought prosperity into our own economy, even as we built the 
global economy. We educated our people for new work and propelled a 
movement for civil rights that lifted millions of Americans into equal 
dignity and gave all Americans at least some chance to join the middle 
class.
    Now we have to do what your generation did for us, to guide new 
democracies into an era of security and prosperity, to renew our own 
economy, to give hope to our communities, to give every individual the 
tools they need to assume personal responsibility for themselves and 
their families, to prepare our young people for life in the 21st 
century. And perhaps still most difficult of all, we have got to find a 
way to work together in this country to make a strength out of our 
diversity, to prove that in a global economy where the Earth is smaller 
and smaller, the fact that we are nations of many races and faiths and 
many backgrounds is a great source of strength if we will tap it with 
open minds and open hearts.
    Here in the Government, the President and the Congress, we have some 
power to bring more jobs and lower the deficit. We have the power to 
pass laws that will help people to combat crime and will help to open 
trading opportunities all around the world. We have the power to pass 
laws that will give communities the tools they need to rebuild and give 
families the breaks they need to succeed at work and at home, like the 
Family Leave Act.
    But one thing I've learned here now in nearly 2 years as President: 
No matter how much progress we make in passing the laws, what goes on in 
the hearts of our countrymen is still the most important thing. And 
there is still too much in our country that divides us, too many who see 
the glass as half-empty instead of half-full. We can win the battles 
before us. There is no problem we face today that America cannot 
overcome. But we have to have the spirit and the character and the sheer 
endurance and faith that so many of you demonstrated by the dignity and 
courage of your service in the Second World War.
    Before I turn the microphone over to Congressman Sanford Bishop of 
Georgia, who will read the awards as Secretary Brown and I congratulate 
the honorees, let me say just a word about Haiti, since Congressman 
Rangel was kind enough to mention it.
    As all of you know now, it is a place where terrible atrocities have 
occurred. After a democratic leader was thrown out and dictators took 
over, people were murdered, slashed, raped, anything to intimidate them 
into submission. It is a place where democracy has been taken away, the 
only place in our entire hemisphere where an elected government was 
supplanted with a dictatorship. Because of the oppression and the 
difficulties, it is a place where we have had many immigrants streaming 
out of it, look-


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ing for freedom and relief. And unless we act, there will be more.
    I hope you also know that we have bent over backwards now for 3 
years to avoid this confrontation. We have sought a peaceful solution, 
repeatedly. Last year we made an agreement here in the United States; 
the dictator, General Cedras, came here and signed an agreement in which 
he promised to leave power in return for a spirit of a reconciliation 
and humanity, putting the country back together. And then when the day 
came to keep the deal, he broke it, turned the United Nations away, and 
now they're even refusing to talk to representatives of the United 
Nations.
    Well, here in our neighborhood, that level of human rights abuse, 
the loss of democracy through robbery, the continued threat of the 
instability of immigration, and breaking your word to the United States, 
United Nations, and all your neighbors, those things are things which 
cannot stand.
    I also want to say, as all of you know, our military is as good as 
it's ever been, perhaps better than it's ever been. It's more united, 
more flexible, more modern, and yet more skilled in the old-fashioned 
virtues and abilities perhaps than ever before. Our leaders have 
prepared well for this moment, while hoping that it would not be 
necessary. But as all of you know, as well as any American, there is no 
such thing as a risk-free journey in this area.
    We have done everything we can to be deliberate and fair. Even at 
this hour, just a few minutes ago, we had all the members of our 
coalition, including the Prime Ministers of several of the Caribbean 
countries, into the White House. President Aristide made a speech in 
which he said, ``No violence, reconciliation. Let's don't do this; let's 
don't take retribution on each other anymore.'' This is a right cause, 
with a country that is near, in our own neighborhood, where the mission 
is plain and limited and achievable.
    And I just want to say to all of you that I honor your 
contributions, and I know you honor the contributions of all those young 
men and women in uniform who now are able to achieve their God-given 
abilities in the service of their country without regard to their race 
because of what you did.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 4:59 p.m. at the Longworth House Office 
Building. The National POW/MIA Recognition Day proclamation of September 
14 is listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.