    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 20, 1996]
    [Pages 302-304]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Swearing-In Ceremony for Kweisi Mfume as President of the
    National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
    February 20, 1996

        Thank you very much, Myrlie Evers-Williams, for your introduction,
    for your remarks, and most importantly, for your willingness to take on
    what appeared to be a thankless and could well have been a no-win
    situation in seizing the helm of the NAACP and helping to bring it to
    this moment of great celebration and unity. The entire Nation is in your
    debt, and we thank you.
        To the distinguished Members of Congress, the mayors who are here,
    the clergy, members of the administration; to the young people who have
    performed and the family of Congressman Mfume. Kweisi told me today
    before we came out that this is a celebration of rebirth and renewal.
    And the Vice President and I were standing there amidst his--four of his
    five strapping young sons; the other is in school or he would be here,
    showing that he still has his priorities in order. [Laughter] He said,
    ``This is going to be a celebration of rebirth and renewal. And so I
    have given this over to the young people and to Roger Wilkins.''
    [Laughter] And I must say, as I heard Jaimie speak, and as I heard Jason
    speak for the Arkansas contingent here, and as I heard Ayinde speak--by
    the way, I memorized that poem, and I never spoke it half that well--and
    then I heard the Morgan State Choir sing, I thought this really is about
    rebirth and renewal and energy and youth. And I kept cutting my speech
    shorter and shorter. [Laughter]
        I just want to make a couple of brief points. This country does
    still need the NAACP. Oh, we are here in the Justice Department today
    because of what the NAACP has meant to us. When I was the age of these
    young people here, I can remember what it was like, still, to have a
    church burned in your home State, to have people intimidated away from
    pursuing their legal rights. We are here because of what the NAACP has
    meant to America. To me and to Al Gore, growing up as white southerners
    in the South, we loved the NAACP. It made us believe that something good
    was going to come at the end of the civil rights struggle. It made us
    believe that we could all live together and grow together.
        But we know today in this age of incredible possibility for our
    country, when we have the African-American unemployment rate in single
    digits for the first time in 20 years, 100,000 new African-American
    owned businesses--we know still that more than half our people are
    working harder just to keep up. We know still that, as we glory in these
    young people being in college, that the college-going rate is going up,
    but the college-going rate among young people who come from the poorest
    fifth of our families has leveled off and going down because

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    of the costs. And we know we must never go back to the days of the black
    church bombings, the other terrible acts of racial terrorism. And so I
    want to say, too, we need the NAACP today not only because there are
    still economic problems and elementary social divisions. We have to do
    everything we can to see that we determine, in this Justice Department,
    who created these recent crimes and all of us stand together against any
    kind of return to that.
        Let me say as I look across this crowd and I see so many people--I
    don't want to call names, but I want to say just one thing about our
    public life. I see Reverend Jackson and Mrs. King and Dexter and
    Congressman and Secretary Kemp standing there, sitting there. One of the
    men who wanted to replace me in the Presidential election this year had
    to undergo the agony of having leaflets passed out against his Asian-
    American wife. That is wrong. We still need the NAACP, and no party can
    tolerate that sort of thing. And none of our people should. We're all
    the same in this country, and we still haven't learned that yet.
        If you look at where we are and where we're going, we can never
    create opportunity for all Americans who are willing to assume the
    responsibility to seize it unless we determine to go into the future
    together. That's what the NAACP must remind us of. That is the great
    lesson of America, and unfortunately, not every American has learned it
    yet. And until we all learn it and live by it, we will need the NAACP.
        Let me also say that when Kweisi called me to tell me that he was
    going to take this job, in the words of the old country song, I didn't
    know whether to kill myself or go bowling. [Laughter] I had become
    almost emotionally dependent upon him being in the Congress--
    [laughter]--supporting me when I needed it, reprimanding me when I
    needed it, whether I knew it or not. [Laughter] I never have much time
    for television, but whenever I channel-surfed and saw him doing his talk
    show on television, I always stopped and marveled at how well he related
    to all those different kinds of people. He is a uniquely gifted man,
    with a personal history that shimmers with the promise of America and
    the possibility of personal renewal and the virtue of never giving up on
    yourself or your family or your common possibility.
        I can't help but say that in the continuing struggle we have to
    rescue our young people. When you see these young people, you know there
    is nothing that they cannot do. And when you see so many others we are
    losing, when the crime rate goes down in America, the juvenile violence
    rate goes up, when drug use goes down in America and drug use among
    juveniles goes up, you ask yourself, there's got to be something wrong
    here when not all of our children don't do this and don't have these
    opportunities and don't shimmer with their own energy and integrity and
    possibility. That's what Kweisi Mfume will help to bring to America
    through the NAACP.
        Because he is a Congressman from Maryland and we have so many of his
    colleagues here, I think we must also say that a lot of our hearts were
    broken when those eight young Job Corps trainees from Maryland perished
    in the train crash just a few days ago. Like most of you, I sat there, a
    helpless citizen, watching it on television, thinking about all of the
    promise of those children. But let me remind you that they were given a
    chance, and we should remember them and honor them by determining to
    give every child who needs a chance the chance they were given. And that
    is why we need the NAACP and why we need Kweisi Mfume to lead it. We
    should honor that.
        Let me finally say that his constituents have given him the greatest
    recommendation possible for this job in what is going on in the effort
    to succeed him. [Laughter] You can tell how good a person is by whether
    others want to do what he once did or she once did. We had a mayor in my
    hometown once spend his entire term offering to fix parking tickets in
    nongrammatical ways, and when he left office, it took us months to find
    anyone to run. [Laughter] When he announced he was leaving, 32 people
    showed up; it's almost impossible to sort out the election process. It's
    a great tribute to the standard of public service set by this
    Congressman. I am laughing about it; I am dead serious: 28 Democrats and
    4 Republicans showed up because they know it means something to
    represent the American people in the United States Congress because of
    the way he represented the people of his district.
        So I say to you, my fellow Americans, as someone who is in the
    personal debt of the NAACP, and as your President, we need the NAACP. I
    thank every person here who worked with Myrlie to bring it back together
    to this point, to shed the old baggage and to go forward with a clear
    mind and a free heart. And I thank

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    my good friend Congressman Mfume for his willingness to lay down his
    political career for even higher public service. It is a wise choice. It
    will give us a better future. And we are all here to celebrate as I ask
    the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals, Judge Harry
    Edwards, to come forward and administer the oath to the new president
    and CEO of the NAACP.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:38 p.m. in the Great Hall at the
    Department of Justice. In his remarks, he referred to Myrlie Evers-
    Williams, chair, board of directors, NAACP; Roger Wilkins, author and
    professor, George Mason University; Jaimie Smith, student, Baltimore
    School of the Arts; Jason Hines, student, Morgan State University;
    Ayinde Jean-Baptiste, student, Whitney Young Magnet High School; civil
    rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson; Coretta Scott King, founder, and
    Dexter King, president and chief executive officer, Martin Luther King,
    Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc.; and former Secretary of
    Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp.