    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 29, 1995]
    [Pages 1513-1518]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom
    September 29, 1995

        Good morning, and welcome to all of you, especially to the honorees,
    their family members, their friends, the distinguished Members of
    Congress.
        The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor given to
    civilians in the United States. It has a special history, established 50
    years ago by President Truman to honor noble service in time of war. In
    1963, President Kennedy expanded its purpose, making it an honor for
    distinguished civilian service in peacetime. The 12 Americans we honor
    today embody the best qualities in our national character. All have
    committed themselves, both publicly and privately, to expanding the
    circle of freedom and the opportunities the responsible exercise of
    freedom brings, at home and around the world.
        In this time of change, where people's living patterns and working
    patterns are undergoing such dramatic transformation, it is necessary
    and fashionable to focus on new ideas and new visions of the future. We
    are here today to celebrate people who have always been for change and
    who have changed America for the better but who have done it based on
    the enduring values that make this country great: the belief that we
    have to give all of our citizens the chance to live up to the fullest of
    their God-given capacities; the conviction that we have to do everything
    we can to strengthen our families and our communities; the certainty
    that when the chips are down, we have to do what is good and right, even
    if it is unpopular in the short run; the understanding that we have the
    obligation to honor those who came before us by passing better lives and
    brighter opportunities on to those who come after.
        This medal commemorates the remarkable service and indelible spirit
    of individual Americans. But it also serves as a beacon to all Americans
    and especially to our children. For our children, especially now when so
    many of their lives have been darkened by violence and irresponsible or
    absent role models, the robbers of innocence, of poverty and drug abuse
    and gang life, the excesses of our modern commercial media culture and
    other forces that are undermining the fabric of good lives, all of these
    things require more and more people to live by the values and measure up
    to the example of the winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. They
    represent in so many ways the true face of American heroism today.
        Let me begin now by introducing each of them in turn.
        As a young mother 27 years ago, Peggy Charren took a good look at
    her children's frequent companion, television, and she did not like what
    she saw. But unlike others who simply bemoan the problem, she actually
    did something about it. She took a stand against entrenched and powerful
    institutions in Government and in business, and she made them listen.
    She started Action for Children's Television. As a result, she uplifted
    the quality of what comes into our homes and inspired a whole generation
    of citi-

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    zen activists. In 1990, the campaign that began in front of Peggy
    Charren's television set reached Capitol Hill when Congress passed the
    Children's Television Act. And for the first time, the television
    industry was challenged to fulfill its responsibility to educate our
    children, not just to entertain them. Peggy Charren, mother and now
    grandmother, leader and reformer in the best American tradition, has put
    all of our children first, and we thank her for it.
        Now, I'm going to change the order here a minute, just a little, and
    go to Joan Ganz Cooney. While Peggy Charren forced television to change
    its ways from the outside, Joan Ganz Cooney did the same thing from the
    inside. In 1968, she launched the Children's Television Workshop, and a
    whole new landscape of joyful education opened up before our children's
    eyes. Out of this effort came ``Sesame Street,'' ``The Electric
    Company,'' ``3-2-1 Contact,'' and other programs that enlighten not only
    our youngsters but older people as well. With a host of lovable
    characters like the Cookie Monster and Big Bird, who became as familiar
    to me at one point in our family life as the people I grew up with--
    [laughter]--these shows have helped teach a generation of children to
    count and to read and to think. They also teach us more about how we
    should live together. We all know that Grover and Kermit reinforce
    rather than undermine the values we work so hard to teach our children,
    showing kids every day what it means to share, to respect differences,
    and to recognize that it's not easy being green. [Laughter]
        Joan Ganz Cooney has proven in living color that the powerful medium
    of television can be a tool to build reason, not reaction, for growth,
    not stifling, to help build young lives up rather than tear them down.
    We all know that TV is here to stay. Most of us, frankly, love it even
    when we curse it. But we also know that there are clear damaging effects
    to excessive exposure to destructive patterns of television. As the Vice
    President and Mrs. Gore have pointed out on so many occasions and as
    their recent family conference on media and the family demonstrated, the
    numbing effects of violence or the numbing inability to concentrate that
    comes from overexposure to mindless, repetitive programming are things
    that we have to fight against.
        Peggy Charren sounded the alarm; Joan Ganz Cooney developed an
    alternative. And even today as we grapple with this challenge--how to
    get the best and repress the worst--we know that we would be nowhere
    near where we are were it not for these two remarkable American heroes.
    We thank them. Thank you so much.
        William T. Coleman, Jr.'s first public act to advance equal
    opportunity came early in his life. He tried out for his high school
    swim team, and in response, the school disbanded the team. [Laughter]
    For four decades in the courtroom, the boardroom, the halls of power,
    Bill Coleman has put his brilliant legal intellect in service to our
    country. He was the first African-American accepted on the Harvard Law
    Review, the first to serve as a clerk on the United States Supreme
    Court, the first to serve in the President's Cabinet--the second to
    serve in the President's Cabinet, and the first to reach the pinnacle of
    the corporate bar. As Secretary of Transportation to President Ford, he
    helped to open the doors of opportunity to thousands of black
    entrepreneurs. As a corporate director, he broke the color barrier in
    the Nation's executive suites. Today, as chairman of the board of the
    NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, he continues the fight.
        I have known Bill Coleman for a long time. I had the honor and
    pleasure of being his son's roommate for a year in law school. I think
    it is fair to say that the first time we saw each other, he never
    dreamed that I would be here and he would be there. [Laughter] But I can
    honestly say, if you are looking for an example of constancy,
    consistency, disciplined devotion to the things that make this country a
    great place, you have no further to look than William Coleman, Jr. Thank
    you.
        Fifty years ago, John Hope Franklin was on a train in North
    Carolina, jammed into a compartment reserved for baggage and for
    African-Americans. When he asked the conductor if he and his fellow
    passengers could move to a near-empty car occupied by just five white
    men, he was told it couldn't be done, for the men, the conductor said,
    were German prisoners of war. John Hope Franklin and those with him were
    prisoners of something else, American racism.
        John Hope Franklin has both lived and chronicled the history of race
    in America. He is the author of many books, including the classic ``From
    Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans.'' He provided
    Thurgood Marshall with critical historical research for the landmark
    case of Brown v. Board of Education. He has taught throughout America
    and around the

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    world, and he has influenced countless, countless students of the
    American scene with his profound scholarship.
        ``I look history straight in the eye and call it like it is,'' John
    Hope Franklin has said. This has meant telling the untold stories of
    northern racism and of slaves successfully striking for better
    conditions under the sinful confines of slavery. It has meant blazing a
    trail through the academy, but never confusing his role as an advocate
    with his role as a scholar. It has meant holding to the conviction that
    integration is a national necessity if we are to truly live by the
    values enshrined in the Constitution.
        John Hope Franklin, the son of the South, has always been a moral
    compass for America, always pointing us in the direction of truth. I
    think I can speak for Hillary and for the Vice President and Mrs. Gore
    in saying that one of the most memorable moments of our campaign in 1992
    was having John Hope Franklin take a ride with us on our campaign bus.
    And he sat in the front. [Laughter]
        In 1944, at the age of 16, Leon Higginbotham arrived at his
    Midwestern college only to be pushed back by the icy hand of racism.
    There, he and 12 other African-American students were housed in an
    unheated attic. Fed up with sub-zero nights, Leon Higginbotham went to
    the university president to protest. ``Higginbotham,'' the president
    said, ``the law doesn't require us to let colored students in the dorm,
    and you either accept things as they are or leave the university.'' So
    Leon Higginbotham set out to change the law. He went to Yale law school,
    and after he was rejected by every major Philadelphia law firm because
    of his race, he turned to public service, working as a community lawyer
    and a State and Federal official.
        When Leon Higginbotham was named to the Federal bench at the age of
    36 by President Kennedy, he was the youngest Federal judge to be
    appointed in three decades. He served with distinction and eventually
    became judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He also found the
    time to write and speak with idealism and rigor on the great dilemmas of
    race and justice.
        His retirement has been spent, remarkably, helping to draft the
    constitution for a democratic South Africa and teaching a fresh
    generation of students at Harvard. We honor Judge Higginbotham, whose
    life as much as his scholarship has set an example of commitment,
    enlargement, and service to new minds at home and now, thank God, to a
    newly free South Africa an ocean away.
        Thank you, Leon Higginbotham.
        Judge Frank Johnson could not be here today and so had to send the
    young gentleman to my left to receive his award for him. He was advised
    by his doctor not to travel. I admire that doctor. I imagine that he is
    the first person who ever got Frank Johnson to do something he did not
    want to do. [Laughter]
        For his steadfastness, his constitutional vision, his courage to
    uphold the value of equal opportunity, even at the expense of his own
    personal safety, for these things, we honor Frank Johnson with the
    Presidential Medal of Freedom.
        During 40 years on the bench, Judge Johnson made it his mission to
    see to it that justice was done within the framework of law. In the face
    of unremitting social and political pressure to uphold the traditions of
    oppression and neglect in his native South, never once did he yield. His
    landmark decisions in the areas of desegregation, voting rights, and
    civil liberties transformed our understanding of the Constitution. He
    fought for the right of Rosa Parks to sit where she wanted on the bus
    and battled for the right of Martin Luther King and others to march from
    Selma to Montgomery.
        Armed with a gavel and the Constitution, Frank Johnson changed the
    face of the South. He challenged America to move closer to the ideals
    upon which it is founded and forever will be an inspiration to all who
    admire courage and value freedom. We wish you were here with us today,
    but his spirit is in this place, and we thank him.
        For a good long while now, Dr. C. Everett Koop, as Surgeon General
    of the United States and afterward as America's most well-known private
    doctor, has told the Nation the truth as he sees it, whether we want to
    hear it or not. In so doing, he has saved countless lives and left an
    enduring legacy of the doctor as a healer in the broadest and deepest
    sense of the word.
        Dr. Koop's life has been defined by doing the right thing. He chose
    children's medicine for the simple reason that his colleagues were
    ignoring it. He refused to let political considerations leave Americans
    vulnerable to the epidemics of AIDS and teen pregnancy. He fought for
    sex education, knowing that if he were to be true to the value of
    protecting our children, we could not let them live in perilous

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    ignorance. He told America that tobacco is addictive, that it kills, and
    that we have to get cigarettes out of our children's hands.
        He helped us to come to grips with the painful shortcomings in
    America's health care delivery system and what it means for children
    that over 40 million of our people have no health insurance. And we
    value his support for the action now being taken to try to protect
    children's lives from the epidemic of smoking, which embraces 3,000 of
    them a day and will shorten 1,000 of their lives every day.
        Dr. Koop's record is a priceless reminder that disease is immune to
    ideology and that viruses do not play politics. Over the course of his
    career, I have seen him attacked from both the left and the right for
    his strong convictions. But all of us who have watched him, not only in
    public but as Hillary and I have had the chance to do in private, know
    that in the very best sense, he stands for life in America and for the
    potential of all of our children. And for that, the United States should
    be eternally grateful to C. Everett Koop.
        Twenty-five years ago this year, Americans came together for the
    very first Earth Day. They came together to make it clear that dirty
    air, poison water, spoiled land were simply unacceptable. They came
    together to say that preserving our natural heritage for our children is
    a national value. And they came together, more than anything else,
    because of one American, Gaylord Nelson. His career as Wisconsin's
    Governor, United States Senator, and now as counselor of the Wilderness
    Society has been marked by integrity, civility, and vision. His legacy
    is inscribed in legislation, including the National Environmental
    Education Act and the 1964 Wilderness Act,
        As the father of Earth Day, he is the grandfather of all that grew
    out of that event: the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act,
    the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act. He also set a standard
    for people in public service to care about the environment and to try to
    do something about it. And I think that the Vice President would want me
    to say that young people like Al Gore, back in 1970, realized, because
    of Gaylord Nelson, that if they got into public service, they could do
    something to preserve our environment for future generations.
        In the 1970's, when a river was so polluted it actually caught on
    fire, Gaylord Nelson spoke up. He insisted that Americans deserved the
    safety that comes from knowing the world we live in will not make us
    sick. He warned that our leaders should never let partisan politics
    divert us from responsibility to our shared environment. He inspired us
    to remember that the stewardship of our natural resources is the
    stewardship of the American dream. He is the worthy heir of the
    tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, and the Vice President's work and that
    of all other environmentalists today is the worthy heir of Gaylord
    Nelson.
        Today as much as at any time in modern American history, we need to
    remember what we share on this precious planet and in this beloved
    country. And I hope that Gaylord Nelson's shining example will
    illuminate all the debates in this city for years to come.
        Walter Reuther was an American visionary so far ahead of his times
    that although he died a quarter of a century ago, our Nation has yet to
    catch up to his dreams. A tool and die maker by trade, Walter Reuther
    built a great union that lifted industrial workers into the middle
    class. But he always understood that the UAW stood for something greater
    and nobler than a few more dollars in the paycheck. So he fought for
    causes on the edge of America's horizon, from racial justice to small
    cars that would conserve fuel and compete successfully both here and
    abroad.
        He wanted America to create an economy strong and supple enough to
    convert from peacetime production to defense work and back again without
    costing workers and their families their livelihoods. As the journalist
    Murray Kempton said later, ``Walter Reuther was one man who could
    reminisce about the future.'' The union he led and the future he built
    stand as a memorial to what is bravest and best in the American spirit.
    Would that we had more people like him today. We are honored that his
    daughters are here and that his award will be received by his young
    grandson.
        Walter Reuther.
        Our homes, our cities, our neighborhoods, our communities, all these
    represent who we are. With the helping hand of James Rouse, many of
    these places have come to reflect our best values. In the 1960's, James
    Rouse saw a problem. Poorly planned suburban neighborhoods did more than
    take away from the landscape, they had a corrosive effect on our sense
    of community. So he did something about it; he con-

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    ceived and built Columbia, Maryland. By updating the colonial village
    for modern times, he gave a generation of architects and designers a
    blueprint for reviving community all across our Nation.
        A decade later, James Rouse turned to another monumental task,
    healing the torn-out heart of America's cities. He met the challenge
    head-on. With Boston's Faneuil Hall, Baltimore Harbor Place, and other
    developments, he put the town square squarely back into America's urban
    life. He proved that we could reclaim and recreate our urban frontiers.
    Adviser to Presidents, foe of economic and racial segregation, champion
    of high-quality, affordable housing, James Rouse's life has been defined
    by faith in the American spirit. He has made our cities and our
    neighborhoods as beautiful as the lives that pass through them.
        He has shown us that we can build communities worthy of the
    character and optimism of our people. I know that he has had a special
    impact on our Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry
    Cisneros. And I can tell you that he has had a very special impact on my
    life. Every time I see James Rouse I think if every American developer
    had done what James Rouse has done with his life, we would have lower
    crime rates, fewer gangs, less drugs; our children would have a better
    future; our cities would be delightful places to live; we would not walk
    in fear, we would walk in pride down the streets of our cities, just as
    we still can in the small towns in America. James Rouse has changed this
    country. And if more will follow his lead, we can do the entire job we
    need to do in our cities.
        Mr. James Rouse.
        His name was William C. Velasquez, but everyone knew him as Willie.
    Willie was and is now a name synonymous with democracy in America.
    Through the organization he founded, the Southwest Voter Registration
    Education Project, he nearly doubled Hispanic voter registration and
    dramatically increased the number of Latino elected officials in this
    Nation. His appeal to the Hispanic community was simple, passionate, and
    direct: ``Su voto es su voz,'' your vote is your voice.
        The movement he began here at home went on to support democracy
    abroad in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico, and in South Africa. From
    the farm fields of California, where he organized workers with Cesar
    Chavez, to the halls of Harvard, where he taught politics, Willie
    Velasquez was driven by an unwavering belief that every American should
    have a role in our democracy and a share in the opportunities of our
    great Nation.
        Willie Velasquez died too young. He was just 44 when he passed away
    in 1988. But in his vibrant life, he restored faith in our ideals and in
    ourselves. And no person in modern America who has run for public office
    wherever Hispanic Americans live has failed to feel the hand of Willie
    Velasquez. He made this a greater country and we're honored that his
    wife is here with us today.
        It is not surprising that Lew Wasserman has devoted his life to
    helping others to see. For it was his vision that led him from the
    streets of Cleveland to the top of Hollywood and his perspective that
    inspired him to give so much back to a nation that had given so much to
    him. Lew Wasserman helped to build MCA from a small booking agency into
    a vast multimedia company. His feat awakened the world to the infinite
    promise of the American entertainment industry.
        It also showed a new generation of American business leaders that a
    company's success can be measured by the depth of its values as well as
    by the size of its revenues. In honor of MCA's founder, the eye doctor
    Jules Stein, Lew Wasserman has made an astonishing contribution to treat
    and to cure blindness. He has devoted himself to strengthening the
    American community through his role as citizen adviser to almost a half
    century of Presidents of both parties and with his support for countless
    humanitarian efforts.
        Never for a moment has he forgotten his roots, the value of hard
    work, or the importance of giving people in far, far less fortunate
    conditions a chance to make something of their lives. The story of Lew
    Wasserman is the story of the American dream, not--not--just for what he
    has achieved but far more important for what he has given back. I have
    met a lot of philanthropists and successful people in my life. I don't
    know that I ever met anybody that more consistently every day looked for
    another opportunity to do something for somebody else, to give somebody
    else the chance to enjoy the success that he had in life.
        I thank you, Lew Wasserman.
        Let me close, before we hear from the official citation and present
    the medals, by saying that

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    I think that all the people who are here, were they to speak, would tell
    you that they did not come here alone. They were guided by parents and
    teachers, by neighbors and mentors. Many were inspired by other great
    Americans who themselves at some time in the past received this very
    medal.
        The miracle of American life is that this cycle can be repeated over
    and over again with each succeeding generation and that with each
    succeeding generation, we make freedom a little more real and full to
    all Americans. I ask all of you to think about that. You couldn't help
    feeling, when you heard these stories, that this is a very great
    country. And we do not have to give in to our lesser selves. We do not
    have to be divided. We do not have to achieve less than we can. If we
    will follow their examples, we will make sure that in the next century,
    this country will be all it was meant to be for all of our children.
        I'd like to now ask the military aide to read the citations as I
    present the Medals of Freedom.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:45 a.m. in the East Room at the White
    House.