    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 14, 2000]
    [Pages 717-720]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Dinner for Representative John Lewis
    in Atlanta
    April 14, 2000

        Thank you very much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for that
    wonderful welcome. I want you to know what I've been thinking, sitting
    over here. I'm sitting here thinking to myself, now that Reverend Lewis
    has preached--[laughter]--and Sister Battle
    has sung--[laughter]--there's nothing left for me to do but pass the
    plate, and that's already been done. The invitation was issued in
    advance; I'm just preaching to the saved. [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you how profoundly grateful I am to be here, to
    be joined by John and Lillian and John
    Miles and the whole Lewis family;
    Governor and Mrs. Barnes; Mayor and Mrs.
    Campbell; Congressman Bishop; former Congressman Buddy Darden and Lillian. And I
    want to thank Brock Peters; he's been a great
    master of ceremonies. And Reverend Belin also sang us a pretty good prayer, didn't he?
    [Applause] I thought he was great.
        I want to congratulate Ray Strother
    on that beautiful, beautiful film. He did a wonderful job, and I thank
    him.
        You know, John was up here talking about being 60 years old, and I
    was thinking about the first time I met him, when I was just a young man
    back in the seventies, held no office, wanted to get elected to
    something in my State, and was interested in helping a fellow from
    Georgia named Carter get elected President. And I remember John talking
    to me about all these stories we saw in the movie. Twenty-five

    [[Page 718]]

    years ago, my eyes were big. I thought, one of the reasons I liked
    politics and one of the reasons I'm a Democrat is I can sit here, a 29-
    year-old kid, and talk to John Lewis about his life. If anybody had ever
    told me 25 years later I'd be back here talking about a distinguished
    60-year-old Congressman, and I'd be President, I'd have thought they
    were nuts. [Laughter] But I'm honored to be here.
        It's amazing how quickly time passes. I was looking at John Miles
    Lewis talking about his daddy. Didn't you
    think he did a good job, by the way? I thought he was great. [Applause]
    But Lillian and John and John Miles and I were
    standing up there getting our picture taken. And John was playing his
    daddy role, and he said, ``I don't know about that hair.'' I said,
    ``John, let's don't act like we're old.'' I said, ``If I was 23 and I
    could have hair like that, I'd do it in a bird-dog minute.'' [Laughter]
    I thought it was great.
        That's true. When John Lewis introduced me a few weeks ago in Selma
    and we were standing at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he gave a beautiful
    statement like he did tonight. And then when he introduced me, I said,
    ``John, the only thing you said I'd disagree with is, you said the
    President didn't have to be in Selma today.'' Because I did have to be
    there; because it was my story, too; because what was done at Selma
    before and after freed me, too.
        And what I want to say--I had to be here tonight, too. I have loved
    John Lewis from the first day I met him. I would feel that way if he had
    never gone to Congress and certainly if I had never become President. I
    love Lillian. She and I were over here crying
    at the gospel singing tonight.
        John Lewis and two of his colleagues--then colleagues--Congressman
    Mike Espy from Mississippi and Bill
    Jefferson from New Orleans, met with me
    in 1991 when I wanted to run for President, and they pledged their
    friendship and support to me when only my mother and my wife thought I
    could be elected. [Laughter]. And then he went out trying to validate me
    to these very skeptical northern Democrats. They sort of agreed with
    President Bush who used to refer to me as the Governor of a small
    southern State. [Laughter] And I was so dumb, I thought that was a good
    thing. [Laughter] I was kind of proud of that. And then through all the
    dark days of the campaign, John was there, and Georgia was there. So I
    had to be here tonight for that reason.
        I had to be here tonight because without John and the many people in
    our Congress that he influenced, the prosperity and peace and social
    progress we enjoy could not have been achieved over these last 7 years.
    And I had to be here tonight most of all because, just as much today as
    40 years ago, John Lewis' life reflects what I think is the central
    lesson we all have to learn about life, and that is that we find more
    meaning in compassion than in judgment, and we find more meaning in
    unity than division.
        John has somehow incorporated into himself the spirit that elevated
    Gandhi and Dr. King, that freed Nelson Mandela of his hate and
    bitterness in spite of 27 long years in prison. He always says that one
    of his favorite hymns is ``This Little Light of Mine.'' Well, his little
    light has certainly shined. And I've tried to make it mine.
        And I say that because for all the good that's happened in the last
    40 years, we still have a lot of bridges to cross. There are still a lot
    of people who are just as smart and hard-working as we are who couldn't
    afford to be here tonight because they haven't participated in our
    recovery. Then there are a lot of people who are here tonight, but
    they're serving our food. Their kids deserve a chance to go to college,
    too. They ought to be paid a decent wage, too. They ought to have access
    to health care, too.
        And for all the bridges we have crossed, even in the last 2 years,
    there are people in this country who have been shot because they were
    black or Asian or Jewish, people who have been falsely accused of
    terrorism because they were Muslims, a young boy stretched out on a rack
    to die in Wyoming because he was gay. So we've still got a few bridges
    to cross.
        But I close with this thought, so you know why I came here for
    someone I truly love. People ask me all the time, you know, ``Well, what
    do you think your greatest achievement was? What do you think your
    biggest disappointment was? If you had one wish for America, what would
    it be?''
        And if I had one wish--God came down to me tonight and said, ``It's
    time to pack it up and go. You can't finish your term. But I'm going to
    give you one wish. I'm no genie; no three wishes, just one''--I would
    pray that somehow America could be infected, every single one of us,
    with the spirit that has animated

    [[Page 719]]

    John Lewis' life. Because, you know, all of us, we get so puffed up with
    the importance of what we're doing and our positions. And I finally got
    so frustrated trying to reach people who were fighting with each other
    that I--I had a gift that was given to me last year, and I just put it
    smack dab on the table that you see when the Oval Office is on
    television, you know. And I'm there meeting with a world leader, and
    there's two chairs and two couches, and there's a little table in
    between. On that table, I have a gift, a Moon rock that Neil
    Armstrong took off the Moon in 1969. He
    brought it to me for safekeeping--only during the period of my service,
    I might add. [Laughter] It belongs to you, to NASA.
        But it is this vacuum-packed Moon rock, and it is 3.6 billion years
    old. So when people get to fighting each other and they are just about
    to call each other names and they are just about to go over the top, and
    we're sitting there in the Oval Office--including me; I get angry, you
    know--I call a timeout. And I say, ``Here, everybody. See that rock
    there? It's 3.6 billion years old. Chill out; we're all just passing
    through here.''[Laughter]
        Ultimately, the lesson of the civil rights movement was that what
    freed us is that the people who were oppressed--not that they got legal
    rights. It's that they got legal rights and we overcame past problems,
    and then they let it go, and they forgave us, and they were able to go
    on.
        So many problems in the world today are still caused by the fact
    that we are, A, afraid of those who are different from us. And once we
    fear people it is easy to dehumanize them, and once you dehumanize them,
    it is easy to justify hurting them or not helping them when they deserve
    a hand up. And then it is a short step from there to violence.
        The next big problem is that almost all of us at some point in our
    lives find it impossible to define our importance, our meaning, unless
    it is with negative reference to another human being or group. And
    there's not a soul in here who hasn't done that. You make some big
    mistake, and you say, ``Well, at least I'm not them. I'm not like that.
    I didn't do that. We're not there.'' And I have spent so much time as
    your President just trying to get the Democrats and Republicans together
    to get over years of accumulated frustration and hurts and angers and
    perceived slights and the deep need that both of us sometimes have to at
    least feel we're better than them.
        I've had to send young Americans in to risk their lives for the
    freedom of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo so that Europe has a chance to
    be free and at peace and we don't drift back into a world war situation.
    To try to stop the conflict in Northern Ireland or try to stop the
    conflicts and make peace in the Middle East or try to help the tribal
    differences in Africa get sorted out--every one of them is rooted in the
    fundamental fact that people have a natural tendency to define the
    pluses in their life in terms of the negative in someone else's.
        And all those beautiful things John says about the beloved
    community, what it basically means is you'd rather hold hands than
    clench your fist. You don't mind being different from other people. You
    celebrate it; you enjoy it; you laugh about it; it makes life more
    interesting. But in the end, you know somehow, when you strip it all
    away, our common humanity is the most important fact of life on this
    Earth. Now, that's what John Lewis' life in public service represents to
    me.
        So if I could do one thing for America, I would move us closer to
    being one America, so we could hold our trembling house down. But to do
    it we'll have to be more like him. We'll have to forgive all those
    people that beat us up, at least with words. We'll have to get over all
    of our--not just our perceived but our real beefs. Everybody here has
    got a real beef against somebody. Everybody here has been the subject of
    some unfairness, some piece of bad luck, some people's mean-
    spiritedness.
        When you strip it all away, the thing that makes us want to be here
    for John tonight is not just that he got his brains beat out, nearly, 35
    years ago for all our freedom but that he let it go. He's not mad at
    anybody. He treats people right, doesn't think he's better than the rest
    of us. He believes we can get more out of holding hands than clenching
    fists.
        I wanted to come here tonight because America and the world need
    more of what is in John Lewis' heart. And for that, I am eternally
    grateful and full of love.
        Thank you very much.

     Note:  The President spoke at 7:15 p.m. in the Grand Salon at the
    Atlanta Airport Hilton and Towers. In his remarks, he referred to
    soprano

    [[Page 720]]

    Kathleen Battle; Representative Lewis' wife, Lillian, and son, John
    Miles Lewis; Gov. Roy E. Barnes of Georgia and his wife, Marie; Mayor
    Bill Campbell of Atlanta and his wife, Sharon; Brock Peters, master of
    ceremonies; former Representative George (Buddy) Darden and his wife,
    Lillian; Rev. Roderick Dwayne Belin, who delivered the invocation; media
    consultant Raymond D. Strother, who produced and directed a brief film
    biography of Representative Lewis; and former astronaut Neil Armstrong.