[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

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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

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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.