    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 5, 2000]
    [Pages 388-391]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the 35th Anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights March in
    Selma, Alabama
    March 5, 2000

        Thank you. This is a day the Lord has made for this very purpose.
    Congressman Lewis, Mrs. King, Reverend Jackson, Reverend
    Harris, Congressman Houghton, and Congressman Hilliard,
    and all the Members of the Congress who are here. I thank all the
    members of my administration who are here, especially Harris
    Wofford, the head of our AmeriCorps program,
    who was here with you 35 years ago today. I thank young Antar
    Breaux. Didn't he give a fine speech?
    [Applause] When he was speaking, John leaned over to me and he said,
    ``You know, I used to give a speech like that when I was young.''
    [Laughter]
        I thank Senator Sanders and Rose
    Sanders for the work they are doing with this
    magnificent Voting Rights Museum. I thank Joe Lowery and Andy Young and Julian
    Bond and all the others who have come here to be
    with us. And I thank you, Hosea Williams and
    Mrs. Boynton and Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Brown and Mr.
    Doyle and Reverend Hunter, all the heroes of the movement from that day, those here
    on this platform and those in the audience.
        I bring you greetings from three of my partners, the First Lady,
    Hillary, and Vice President and Mrs. Gore, who wish they could be here
    today. I thank Ambassador Sisulu for joining

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    us. I thank Governor Siegelman for making us
    feel welcome. And I thank Mayor Smitherman
    for the long road he, too, has traveled in these last 35 years.
        Now, let me say to you a few things. I come today as your President
    and also as a child of the South. The only thing that John Lewis said I
    disagree with is that I could have chosen not to come. That is not true.
    I had to be here in Selma today.
        Thirty-five years ago, a single day in Selma became a seminal moment
    in the history of our country. On this bridge, America's long march to
    freedom met a roadblock of violent resistance. But the marchers, thank
    God, would not take a detour on the road to freedom.
        By 1965, their will had already been steeled by triumph and tragedy,
    by the breaking of the color line at Ole Miss, the historic March on
    Washington, the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and President
    Kennedy, the bombing deaths of four little black girls at the 16th
    Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the
    passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
        On this Bloody Sunday, about 600 foot soldiers--some of whom,
    thankfully, remain with us today--absorbed with uncommon dignity the
    unbridled force of racism, putting their lives on the line for that most
    basic American right: the simple right to vote, a right which already
    had been long guaranteed and long denied.
        Here in Dallas County, there were no black elected officials because
    only one percent of voting-age blacks, about 250 people, were
    registered. They were kept from the polls not by their own indifference
    or alienation but by systematic exclusion, by the poll tax, by
    intimidation, by literacy testing that even the testers themselves could
    not pass. And they were kept away from the polls by violence.
        It must be hard for the young people in this audience to believe,
    but just 35 years ago, Americans, both black and white, lost their lives
    in the voting rights crusade. Some died in Selma and Marion. One of the
    reasons I came here today is to say to the families and those who
    remember Jimmy Lee Jackson, Reverend James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, and
    others whose names we may never know: We honor them for the patriots
    they were.
        They did not die in vain. Just one week after Bloody Sunday,
    President Johnson spoke to the Nation in stirring words. He said, ``At
    times, history and fate meet in a single time and a single place to
    shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at
    Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was
    last week in Selma, Alabama. Their cause must be our cause.''
        Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, emboldened by their faith in God and
    the support of a white southerner in the Oval Office, Dr. King led 4,000
    people across the Pettus Bridge on the 54-mile trek to Montgomery. And 6
    months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act,
    proclaiming that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised
    for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which
    imprison men because they are different from other men. It has been said
    that the Voting Rights Act was signed in ink in Washington, but it first
    was signed in blood in Selma.
        Those who walked by faith across this bridge led us all to a better
    tomorrow. In 1964, there were only 300 black elected officials
    nationwide and just 3 African-Americans in the Congress. Today, those
    numbers have swelled to nearly 9,000 black elected officials and 39
    members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Today, African-Americans hold
    the majority in Selma's city council and school board, because the
    number of African-American registered voters in Dallas County has risen
    from 250 to more than 20,000.
        There's another point I want to make today. Just as Dr. King
    predicted, the rise of black southerners to full citizenship also lifted
    their white neighbors. ``It is history's wry paradox,'' he said, ``that
    when Negroes win their struggle to be free, those who have held them
    down will themselves be free for the first time.''
        After Selma, free white and black southerners crossed the bridge to
    the new South, leaving hatred and isolation on the far side--building
    vibrant cities, thriving economies, and great universities, a new South
    still enriched by the old-time religion and rhythms and rituals we all
    love, now open to all things modern and people of all races and faiths
    from all over the world, a new South in which whites have gained at
    least as much as blacks from the march to freedom. Without Selma,
    Atlanta would never have had the Super Bowl or the Olympics. And without
    Selma, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton would never have been elected
    President of the United States.
        The advance of freedom and opportunity has taken our entire Nation a
    mighty long way. We

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    begin the new millennium with great prosperity and the lowest levels of
    African-American and Hispanic unemployment ever recorded, with greater
    diversity in all walks of life and a cherished role in helping those
    beyond our borders to overcome their own racial and ethnic and tribal
    and religious conflicts. We have built that bridge to the 21st century
    we can all walk across. We come here today to say, we could not have
    done it if brave Americans had not first walked across the Edmund Pettus
    Bridge.
        Yes, we have come a mighty long way. But our journey is not over,
    for despite our unprecedented prosperity and real social progress, there
    are still wide and disturbing disparities that fall along the color
    line, in health and income, in educational achievement and perceptions
    of justice. My fellow Americans, there are still bridges yet to cross.
        As long as there are people and places, including neighborhoods here
    in Selma, that have not participated in our economic prosperity, we have
    a bridge to cross. As long as African-American income hovers at nearly
    half that of whites, we have another bridge to cross. As long as
    African-American and Hispanic children are more likely than white
    children to live in poverty and less likely to attend or graduate from
    college, we have another bridge to cross. As long as African-Americans
    and other minorities suffer 2, 3, even 4 times the rates of heart
    disease, AIDS, diabetes, and cancer, we have another bridge to cross.
        As long as our children continue to die as the victims of mindless
    violence, we have another bridge to cross. As long as African-Americans
    and Latinos anywhere in America believe they are unfairly targeted by
    police because of the color of their skin, and police believe they are
    unfairly judged by their communities because of the color of their
    uniforms, we have another bridge to cross.
        As long as the waving symbol of one American's pride is the shameful
    symbol of another American's pain, we have another bridge to cross. As
    long as the power of America's growing diversity remains diminished by
    discrimination and stained by acts of violence against people just
    because they're black or Hispanic or Asian or gay or Jewish or Muslim--
    as long as that happens to any American, we have another bridge to
    cross. And as long as less than half our eligible voters exercise the
    right that so many here in Selma marched and died for, we've got a very
    large bridge to cross.
        But the bridges are there to be crossed. They stand on the strong
    foundations of our Constitution. They were built by our forebears
    through silent tears and weary years. They are waiting to take us to
    higher ground.
        Oh, yes, the bridges are built. We can see them clearly. But to get
    to the other side, we, too, will have to march. I ask you to remember
    Dr. King's words: ``Human progress never rolls on the wheels of
    inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to
    be coworkers with God.''
        My fellow Americans, this day has a special meaning for me, for I,
    too, am a son of the South, the old, segregated South. And those of you
    who marched 35 years ago set me free, too, on Bloody Sunday, free to
    know you, to work with you, to love you, to raise my child to celebrate
    our differences and hallow our common humanity.
        I thank you all for what you did here. Thank you, Andy and Jesse and Joe, for the lives you have lived since. Thank you,
    Coretta, for giving up your beloved
    husband and the blessings of a normal life. Thank you, Ethel
    Kennedy, for giving up your beloved husband
    and the blessings of a normal life.
        And thank you, John Lewis, for the beatings
    you took and the heart you kept wide open. Thank you for walking with
    the wind, hand in hand with your brothers and sisters, to hold America's
    trembling house down. Thank you for your vision of the beloved
    community, an America at peace with itself.
        I tell you all, as long as Americans are willing to hold hands, we
    can walk with any wind; we can cross any bridge. Deep in my heart, I do
    believe, we shall overcome.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:08 p.m. on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In
    his remarks, he referred to Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther
    King, Jr.; civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson; Rev. Jerome Harris,
    who gave the invocation; Antar Breaux, member, 21st Youth Leadership
    Movement, who introduced the President; State Senator Henry (Hank)
    Sanders and his wife, National Voting Rights Museum President Rose
    Sanders; Joseph Lowery, former president, Southern Christian Leadership
    Conference; former

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    United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Julian Bond, chair, National
    Association for the Advancement of Colored People; South African
    Ambassador to the U.S. Sheila Sisulu; Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama;
    Mayor Joe T. Smitherman of Selma; Ethel Kennedy, widow of Senator Robert
    F. Kennedy; and 1965 voting rights march participants Hosea Williams,
    Amelia Boynton Robinson, Marie Foster, Lillie Brown, Earnest Doyle, and
    Rev. J.D. Hunter.