    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 19, 1999]
    [Pages 219-223]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the NAACP 90th Anniversary Celebration
    February 19, 1999

        I have been friends with Chairman Bond a
    long time. We have had many interesting conversations; not all of them
    have been that laudatory. But Julian, I have that on film now, and I'm
    going to play it--[laughter]--whenever I need a little boost in life,
    I'm just going to turn that film on. [Laughter]
        Thank you. I want to say publicly something I said to Julian
    Bond privately when he agreed to become the
    chair of the NAACP. I called him, and I thanked him. And I thank him
    again. And I thank all of you for what you are doing.
        When Kweisi Mfume agreed to become
    president of the NAACP and leave the Congress, I wept. [Laughter] But he
    told me, he said, ``Now, don't worry.'' He said, ``I'll have a good
    replacement in Congress''--and he did--``and I need to do this. It's the
    right thing for my country and for my people.'' And he, too, has served
    well. And I'm very proud of our friendship and of the service.
        I thank all of you who are helping. When Suzanne DuBose was up here talking about scientists slowing down the
    speed of light and the rest of us speeding up the speed of justice, I
    wish I had thought of that myself. [Laughter] That line won't rest. It
    will be used again and again. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Bell Atlantic and all the other companies who are
    standing with the NAACP. I am delighted to see Bishop Graves and the other officers here. And Bishop, thank you
    for your friendship.
        Most of the people with our administration have been introduced, but
    I want to thank Secretary and Mrs.
    West and Secretary Slater and Bill Lann Lee for being
    here, and Judy Winston, who did such a
    good job with our initiative on race. I want to acknowledge, also, the
    presence in the audience of Mary Beth Cahill, our new Special Assistant to the President for Public
    Liaison. And I want to recognize Ben Johnson, and many of you know he is the first Director of the
    White House Office on our Initiative for One America, and I thank him
    for doing that. Since Bell is so well recognized, there's one other
    former member of the White House staff here, Eric Eve, who went on for the money and the fame of Bell. I want
    to thank him.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I came here tonight for two purposes. One is
    to say a simple thank you. Thank you for what you've done for America,
    and thank you for being my friends. I am grateful. I am very grateful.
    The second is to say that--as Suzanne said so eloquently--we're in a lot
    better shape than we used to be, but nowhere near where we ought to be.
    And what we have to do as a people, as a whole country--but especially
    you, because you know--you know things about where we are and where we
    need to go that not every American does, because of the life you've
    lived and the things you've seen and the work you do. You know that no
    great nation, and certainly not this one, can afford to say, ``Well,
    we're a lot better off than we used to be, so let's take a vacation from
    progress. Let's take a vacation from our struggle for liberty and
    equality. Let's take a vacation from our attempt to spread the reach of
    prosperity and freedom to Africa, to the Caribbean, to our friends in
    the Americas.''
        You know that this is not a time to take a break; it is a time to
    thank God for our prosperity and our opportunities and make the best use
    of them. The Sun is shining, and we need to make hay. We need to work
    while the Sun is shining.
        And to do what I would like to do in these last 2 years of my
    Presidency, just like the last

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    6, we need the help of every one of your 2,200 branches. We need to
    forge new coalitions across the lines of race and class and religion. We
    need to close America's remaining opportunity gaps.
        A lot of you have lived in homes when you were younger--and not so
    well off and prosperous as you are now--[laughter]--where there were
    literally gaps in the walls or the windows, and you could feel the wind
    blowing. Well, there are a lot of people still getting blown by those
    kinds of winds and the opportunity gaps of America.
        Kweisi said, as all of you know, that the NAACP was formed 90 years
    ago. It was founded, as all of you know, I'm sure, in direct response to
    a riot in Springfield, Illinois. Now, I learned something in getting
    ready to come here tonight that I did not know. I had always thought it
    was simply a cruel irony that this riot occurred in Abraham Lincoln's
    hometown and where he was buried. I learned that the white mob was
    actually deliberately conducting the riot there, trying to make Mr.
    Lincoln turn over in his grave. They yelled, storming through the black
    neighborhoods, ``Lincoln freed you; we'll show you where you belong.''
        Well, quite to the contrary, it was the NAACP that helped to show
    you where you belong. On any bus, in any lunch counter, in any voting
    booth, in any school, in the Armed Forces, in the highest echelons of
    Government and business--you belong everywhere. And so do your friends.
    And we will never make what Congressman John Lewis so beautifully called
    the ``beloved community'' until everybody who belongs can be wherever
    they belong.
        I am very grateful for the work we have done together in these last
    6 years. Previous speakers commented on all these folks from our
    administration and how our crowd looks like America. What I would like
    history to say is, ``They had the administration that looked the most
    like America and that did the most for America, proving that excellence
    and diversity and community all go hand in hand.''
        I am grateful that we have stronger communities, with a dropping
    crime rate; that there are only about half as many people on welfare as
    there were 6 years ago; that the doors of college are open to every high
    school student who will work for it through the HOPE scholarship and the
    other academic aid that we have provided; that we have the longest
    peacetime expansion in history and the lowest peacetime unemployment
    since 1957. I am grateful that the prosperity is wider, with the lowest
    African-American unemployment rate ever recorded, the highest African-
    American homeownership rate ever recorded, record numbers of new
    African-American businesses every year.
        But it takes a long time to get it all fixed. Just before I came
    over here tonight, 117 years too late, I awarded a pardon posthumously
    to Lieutenant Henry Flipper, who, because of racial prejudice, was
    wrongfully convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and dismissed from
    the Army more than a century ago. He was born a slave. He was the first
    African-American graduate of West Point. He served with great
    distinction in the 10th Cavalry. In Fort Sill, Oklahoma, he eliminated
    the cause of malaria as a civil engineer by digging what is still called
    ``Flipper's Ditch'' and is now a national monument. He lived to be 84.
    He served as an adviser to a Cabinet Secretary; he did all kinds of
    wonderful work throughout the world. He was cleared of wrongdoing 20
    years ago, but he was never, never fully restored in his good name until
    about an hour and a half ago, when, in the presence of 16 of his family
    members, several African-American graduates of West Point, General Colin
    Powell, and a number of others who are here, I signed his pardon.
        Now, we don't want the rest of America to have to wait 117 years for
    justice. And we don't want people to have to wait until they're gone for
    people to say something halfway nice about them. We don't want to have
    America outraged, even though we honor the outrage, by another killing
    like the killing of James Byrd.
        We know still, every day there are qualified African-Americans who
    are turned away from home loans or business loans; African-American
    drivers pulled over because they look suspicious. Some of you call it
    the offense of ``driving while black.'' We know every day there are
    African-American children who are stuck in failing schools when they're
    entitled to good schools.
        So we've been working at it for 6 years, to try to bring a special
    focus to the need to build one America, and to deal not only with the
    problems of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans and Native
    Americans but the fact that we are now becoming the most diverse
    democracy in the world--California, 10 percent Asian-American, soon to
    have no majority race. We started the initiative on race in 1997 to

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    institutionalize the work of building one America. I appointed Ben
    Johnson to continue our work in an
    organized, specific, and concrete way. And I want you to help us do
    that.
        I would like it very much if, after the next Presidential election,
    the new President is asked repeatedly, ``Now who is going to head your
    One America Office?'' I don't want this to be a one-shot deal. I want
    this to be a journey, not a destination. And I want it to be something
    that makes us think more and more every day, seriously, about how we're
    going to build unity out of our increasing diversity, get rid of our old
    problems, and meet our new challenges. And I want you to help me do
    that.
        I want you to help us, also, to pass this new budget, which helps to
    close some of those large opportunity gaps: the disparities in
    education, in jobs, in economic development, in civil rights
    enforcement, in homeownership, and quality health care.
        I came here tonight to celebrate and thank you, not to talk policy,
    but I want to mention just two areas. First, the economy. We all know
    that even though we have the lowest peacetime unemployment rate since
    1957, there are places that haven't felt much of this vaunted recovery.
    We all know that even though we have the lowest African-American
    unemployment rate every recorded--and the same for Hispanic-Americans--
    it's still quite a bit higher than the national average. And for young,
    single men, it is still quite high indeed.
        Now, if we can't use this moment of unprecedented prosperity to
    bring jobs and opportunity and enterprise to the neighborhoods and to
    the people who have not yet felt it but are willing to work for it, we
    will never get around to doing the job. Now is the time to do that.
        So the NAACP is a nonpartisan organization; you do have Republican
    supporters out across this country who believe in civil rights. And I
    want you to go get them. [Laughter] And haul them up here to Washington,
    with the Democrats, too, and say, ``Look, we want you to pass this new
    markets initiative. We can put $15 billion in private investment into
    neighborhoods in this country that have not seen new investment and new
    jobs and new opportunity for people by giving the right kind of
    incentives, the right kind of tax cuts, the right kind of loan
    guarantees, the right kind of support to business people. And if we
    don't get around to doing it now, we will never get around to it.'' We
    need to do it now.
        I also want to tell you that a lot of farsighted business people
    have figured out that it would be very good for the American economy.
    Why? For the first 5 years of my Presidency, 30 percent of our growth
    came from expanded exports, selling more to other people around the
    world. Last year we had a good year, but we didn't get 30 percent growth
    from our exports. Why? You know why, because of the financial troubles
    in Asia and in a lot of Latin American countries. Now, I think we ought
    to help our friends in Asia, Latin America, and in Africa to trade with
    us more so we can grow and they can grow. But in the meanwhile, we've
    got the most significant untapped market for the growth of the American
    economy right here at home, in all these neighborhoods that still are
    not growing as they should.
        The second thing I want to ask you to do is to help me give every
    child in this country a world-class education. I want you to help me
    finish the job of hiring 100,000 more teachers. I want you to help me
    finish the job. I want you to help me again. I want you to bring your
    Republican and your Democratic friends up here and help me convince the
    Congress not to say no this time to our proposal to build or modernize
    5,000 schools. I'm tired of going into these inner-city schools and
    seeing schools so old we can't even hook them up to computers, with
    broken windows and peeling plaster. It's wrong. And in many other areas,
    you go, and the kids are all having half their classes in housetrailers
    because the schools are bursting at the seams. We need to do that. I
    want you to help me continue our work to hook up every classroom and
    library to the Internet by the year 2000. I want to ask you to help me
    change the way we give out Federal money, to not become victim to a
    tyranny of low expectations.
        I have said many times that I want to end the practice of social
    promotion, but not for the purpose of punishing the kids for a system
    that is failing them. And let me just give you one fact--I said this in
    the State of the Union, but I'm going to say it until I'm convinced
    every American knows it--last year, in the international test in math
    and science, a representative sample of American children, by race and
    income, scored near the top of the world in the fourth grade test. By
    the eighth grade, they had fallen to average. By the 12th grade, they

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    were near the bottom. Nobody came and took brain cells out of those
    kids' heads. They did not get dumber. The system was failing them.
        So, yes, I believe we should end social promotion, but we also are
    tripling funds for after-school and summer school and tutoring programs
    and sending more college students into the schools to mentor kids when
    they're in middle school and tell them they can stay in school and go to
    college and what they need to do to do that. We need to do that.
        We are dramatically increasing our scholarship program to tell young
    people, ``If you'll go into inner cities or isolated rural areas and
    teach school for 3 or 4 years, we'll pay off your student loan. We want
    you to go out there and give something back to your country.''
        We have got to change the way we spend the money. The teachers and
    the parents and the kids are telling us what works; we ought to stop
    funding what doesn't work and start funding what does. We ought to say
    that school districts should raise standards for teachers, and we put
    money in there. There are so many of our teachers out there having to
    teach courses, with the schools overcrowded, that they don't have
    college majors or college minors in.
        That's what happens in high school. It's not that these people are
    not dedicated. They are, but they have not had the chance to be properly
    prepared. And the schools can't get enough teachers to put enough people
    in the classrooms with the kind of academic background. We ought to help
    them change that.
        And there are school districts with schools that are doing great and
    schools that aren't doing so well. The school with the biggest--the
    State with the biggest gain in student performance in the last couple of
    years is North Carolina, because they adopted a strategy that says,
    ``We've got to turn around or shut down failing schools.'' When you do
    that, you almost never have to shut one down. They find a way to turn
    around.
        The great English scholar Benjamin--I mean, Samuel Johnson, once
    said--I had Benjamin Johnson on my mind--[laughter]--Samuel Johnson said
    that it is remarkable how the prospect of one's own demise concentrates
    the mind. [Laughter] We don't want to punish anybody; we want to turn
    schools around--and there's things in this budget to do that--and to
    help the teachers and to give the parents more information and to help
    more districts set up charter schools and to do things that will work,
    so that we don't have one size fits all.
        I read a story the other day about a school district out West that
    organized a school just for high school dropouts. Let them come at
    different hours. Let them have access to computers and special tutors.
    And all of a sudden, almost all the dropouts came back to school. There
    are all kinds of different things that can be done to raise the
    performance level of our schools.
        But I think all of you know that we'll never really have one
    America, and we'll never really get by discrimination, unless we create
    opportunity in the schools and opportunity in the economy. So I ask you
    to help me pass these initiatives.
        Now, let me just say one last thing. I was delighted to be asked to
    come tonight, honored to accept. The work that I have been privileged to
    do as President, and before, in my life to advance the cause of equal
    opportunity is perhaps the thing I cherish most, of all the things that
    I and my wife and our administration have been able to do.
        You'd be amazed how may times in my weekly lunch with the Vice
    President, after we get through with
    whatever business we have to do, we get back to talking about this
    subject. I guess it's because I grew up in the segregated South. Maybe
    it's because I met and was influenced by people like some of you here
    tonight, so many years ago. But part of it is, I know that it's a pure
    miracle that, starting out from where I did as a kid, I wound up here
    tonight. A pure miracle.
        I once heard a guy say every politician wants you to believe he was
    born in a log cabin he built himself. [Laughter] But the truth is, we
    don't build our log cabins ourselves. And not a person standing here or
    sitting here tonight got here on your own. And most of us get out of
    this life better off than we deserve, because God is good and so are the
    people that we get in touch with.
        But it really bothers me that there are children in this country who
    are certainly just as smart, full of as many dreams, with whatever
    abilities God gave me--that they have them--who may not be able to live
    out their dreams. And if all of us as citizens have one responsibility,
    apart from honoring our country and Constitution and laws, it ought to
    be to make sure

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    that at the end of our days we have done everything we can to make sure
    no one we ever touched was denied the chance to live their dreams. We
    know we'll be better off when that's true. We know we'll all get
    something out.
        I look at these young kids that are here tonight, these young
    people. I'm kind of jealous, actually. If they'd let me be 20, I think
    I'd let them be President. [Laughter] You know? I think about the life
    that lies before them and all that they might be. I imagine, 30 years
    from now, some African-American, Hispanic, Asian female standing here as
    President of the United States, you know?
        But I know that as long as there are Native American reservations
    where young American citizens live in communities where the diabetes
    rate is 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 times the national average; as long as there
    are neighborhoods where kids really don't have a chance to get a world-
    class education; as long as there are places where nobody's taking care
    of the pollution, so the health rates are not what they ought to be; as
    long as there is anyplace where anybody can't live out their dreams, the
    NAACP will have work to do, and America will have new ground to break.
    And together, there is no better cause for our energies and our lives.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:07 p.m. in the Great Hall at the National
    Museum of Women in the Arts. In his remarks, he referred to Julian Bond,
    chairman of the board, Kweisi Mfume, president and chief executive
    officer, and Bishop William H. Graves, vice chairman of the board,
    NAACP; Suzanne DuBose, president, Bell Atlantic Foundation; Gail West,
    wife of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Togo D. West, Jr.; Judith A.
    Winston, former Executive Director, President's Initiative on Race; and
    Gen. Colin Powell, USA (Ret.), chairman, America's Promise--The Alliance
    For Youth.