[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 20 (Monday, May 23, 1994)]
[Pages 1106-1109]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the 40th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education in 
Beltsville

May 17, 1994

    Thank you. Thank you very much. My good friend Ernie Green; 
Secretary Riley; Attorney General Reno; your principal, Bette Lewis. I'd 
also like to recognize in the audience today two of my partners in 
trying to make America a better place, two of your distinguished 
Representatives in Congress, Senator Paul Sarbanes and Congressman Steny 
Hoyer. Thank you for being here.
    I have a number of people here who work in the White House, but I 
want to recognize one in particular. We just finished teaching a class 
here on Brown v. Board of Education. I was joined in that class by 
Secretary Riley, who as a young man was involved along with his father 
with the integration of public schools in South Carolina; and with 
Ernest Green, whose background you know; also with Thurgood Marshall, 
Jr., now a member of the Vice President's staff in the White House, 
whose father argued the Brown v. Board of Education case before the 
Supreme Court and later became the first African-American ever to sit on 
the United States Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall, Jr., I'd like him to 
stand up and be recognized.
    I'd like to thank Robin Wiltison and the students who were in her 
class today. They certainly showed us why Martin Luther King Middle 
School is a blue-ribbon school. I was deeply impressed with the 
students. And they asked good questions, and they were very well-
informed. And I think it's fair to say that those of us who came here to 
participate may have enjoyed the class even more than they did.
    We are here today because, as all of you know by now, 40 years ago 
on this day the United States Supreme Court handed down the decision 
called Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court has been in the 
news a lot lately because I've just announced the appointment of a 
distinguished judge, Judge Stephen Breyer, from Boston, to be the new 
Justice to the Supreme Court to fill

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the vacancy created by the resignation of Justice Blackmun.
    Many Americans don't think about the Supreme Court very much and 
only hear about it when it issues a great decision. I can tell you that 
every American thought about the Supreme Court when Brown v. Board of 
Education was decided. Forty years ago, in some parts of this great 
country, African-Americans couldn't vote, couldn't be served in certain 
restaurants or stay in certain hotels, couldn't even get medical care in 
certain hospitals. Before a brave woman named Rosa Parks refused to 
budge off a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and a brave minister named 
Martin Luther King helped her fight back, African-Americans were told 
they had to sit in the back of the bus and give up their seats to white 
people. They were told many other things that deprived them of the 
freedom today we all take for granted.
    Forty years ago, a school like this one, with white and Hispanic and 
African-American and Asian-American students, a real kaleidoscope of 
America's great diversity, it was unthinkable, it wouldn't even have 
existed in major parts of the United States. The decision in Brown v. 
Board of Education helped to change all that.
    We have to remember two things about this: First of all, the change 
didn't happen overnight. And secondly, the people who helped to bring 
that change didn't wait around for anybody to do the hard work for them; 
they did it for themselves. They knew that the future is not something 
you inherit; it's something you have to earn by your own efforts.
    When I say it didn't happen overnight, let me explain exactly what I 
mean. We talked about this somewhat in the class today. The Supreme 
Court can hand down a decision and say schools that are separated solely 
on the basis of the race of the students are unconstitutional; stop it. 
Then millions of people had to figure out, well, what does that mean? 
Where do the teachers go? Where do the students go? Whose schoolbooks do 
you use? What do you do? What are the mechanics of integrating the 
schools? But then there was another Brown decision in which people said, 
``How fast do we have to do this?'' And the Supreme Court said, ``With 
all deliberate speed.'' And in every school district in the country 
where they were working it out, somebody had to say, ``What does `all 
deliberate speed' mean?'' There were still millions of Americans who 
were against it. They thought ``all deliberate speed'' meant several 
years. Then the millions who were for it thought ``all deliberate 
speed'' means tomorrow.
    So these things took a long time. It took, at least, I'd say, 15 
years after the Brown decision before the public schools in this country 
were basically integrated through the system. It did not happen 
overnight. There were a lot of people who had to keep working. And 
that's an important lesson for you today: Nothing worth doing happens 
immediately. You have to make efforts that take time.
    Brown laid a foundation--you heard Ernest Green talking about the 
connection between the Brown case and the ultimate liberation and 
reconciliation of South Africa. We had a Civil Rights Act in 1964. We 
had a Voting Rights Act in 1965. The struggles for freedom in this 
country were seen as a symbol of what could be done by people all over 
the world. There are always going to be people who fight for these kinds 
of changes and, frankly, always going to be people who resist them. The 
Brown decision gave courage to people like Ernest Green. It also gave 
moral backbone to our Nation's leaders. When Ernest Green--for those of 
you who have seen the movie about his life story, you know that when he 
attempted to integrate Little Rock Central High School just a few years 
after Brown v. Board of Education, the Governor of my State then tried 
to stop him by calling out the National Guard, on the theory that people 
were too upset about it. But the President, under the authority of the 
Supreme Court decision, instead turned the National Guard into a United 
States force and enforced the integration order.
    That's the kind of thing that a Supreme Court decision can do if 
there are people like Ernest Green who are willing to pay the price to 
carry out the promise of equality and opportunity in America, even if it 
takes years to do. Thurgood Marshall, the man who brought the Brown v. 
Board of Education

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case to the Supreme Court and who later served on the Supreme Court, 
literally spent his life fighting for these principles and these 
opportunities.
    Now, I say this to make the second point. There have been a lot of--
you may see this if you watch these sort of things on the evening news, 
you'll see a lot of people your parents' and grandparents' age talking, 
or even younger than that, talking in very cynical terms saying, ``Well, 
this is still a society with a lot of segregation,'' or ``Well, this is 
still a society with a lot of racial discrimination,'' or ``Well, this 
is still a society where racial minorities don't have the same economic 
opportunities others do,'' or ``Well, we're still more violent than we 
were 40 years ago.'' And all those people will be saying that sort of as 
an excuse. They'll be saying, ``Therefore, maybe this decision didn't 
count for so much.'' Well, I want to tell you that's flat wrong. This is 
a much better country today because of Brown v. Board of Education and 
because there were people who came before all of you who were literally 
willing to put their lives on the line to see you got an equal 
education, to see that you had a chance to make something of your lives. 
The world and this country are markedly better because of this decision 
and these principles. It is better today. And just because not all the 
problems of this country have been solved, that's no excuse for people 
to say that this Brown v. Board of Education decision didn't make a huge 
difference.
    You heard the Attorney General and the students in the class heard 
the Secretary of Education and me say all three of us grew up in the 
South in segregated societies. And we suffered, too. We were deprived of 
the right to play and go places with and know and live with people of 
different racial and ethnic backgrounds. And we paid a terrible price 
for it. And when it began to go away, our lives were also very, very 
much enriched. I do not believe I would be here as President today if it 
hadn't been for Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act and 
the Voting Rights Act that gave all the people of my State a chance to 
come together as one people.
    What I do want to say to you today is that this generation faces a 
whole lot of challenges that are part of the unfinished business of 
helping us to live together as one people. And we need some more 
miracles like Brown v. Board of Education. And they have to begin, 
however, the same way Brown did, by individual Americans making choices.
    You look at what the problems are today. Is there still racism in 
America today? Of course there is. Is there too much violence today, 
especially among young people? Of course. Are there still too many 
people who don't think they're going to get a fair shake in life and 
don't think they have much of a future to look forward to? Of course 
there are. So what are you going to do about it? And what am I going to 
do about it?
    What we should say is we are going to build on the things which have 
gone before that are good. You have to make choices. If you look at 
what's wrong with our country today--too much violence, too many guns in 
the hands of young people that are too willing to use them, too many 
people victimized by the breakdown of family life and community life, 
too many people victimized by the fact that they don't have a good job 
or a good education, too many young people who are willing to make 
decisions in the flash of a moment that may ruin their entire lives, too 
many schools that still don't work as well as this one does--it all 
begins with personal choices. I ran for President because I made a 
personal choice that I did not want my daughter to grow up in a country 
that was coming apart instead of coming together, and I didn't want you 
to be the first generation of Americans to do worse than your parents, 
and I thought there were things we could do about it. And we're working 
hard to do those things, to create more jobs, to improve our schools, to 
deal with our health care problems, to make our streets safer and our 
schools safer and take on some of these tough law enforcement issues 
that relate to crime and drugs.
    The Congress voted last week to ban assault weapons. It's high time 
to put more police officers on the street, to give young people more 
programs that will help to prevent them from getting involved in a 
violent life. We have made some personal decisions. But you have to make 
some personal decisions, too. The magic of education starts in every

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school, in every classroom. You have to decide that you will not drop 
out of school and that you will stay in and that you will do well. You 
have to decide that you will not use alcohol or drugs or take up guns. 
You have to decide that you will not become a mother or a father before 
you're old enough to understand and take responsibility and do the job 
right, instead of wrecking your life with it. You have to decide that 
you are going to have the discipline and commitment necessary to 
continue your education and to tone down the frustration and anger that 
every person feels.
    A lot of these kids getting killed today are getting killed with the 
same sort of anger and frustration that people have always felt when 
they were fighting over things, except now they can go pick up a gun and 
do something about it. You have to take the lead, every one of you, in 
dealing with your own lives and your own schools to try to stop this. 
This is crazy, all this violence among young people. And a lot of these 
kids that are killing their lives by shooting other people are people 
who don't even have prior criminal records. You've got to get together 
and talk about what makes people mad, and what do you do when you get 
mad and when you get frustrated, and how do you walk away from that. And 
that's something that the President and the Congress and all the people 
in the world can't do for you if you won't do for yourselves.
    We are very fortunate in this country today that 40 years ago the 
people did what was necessary to bring that case to the Supreme Court 
and that every Justice on the Supreme Court said separate but unequal 
educational facilities are wrong. And if they are separated by race by 
law, they are by definition unequal, and they are unconstitutional. We 
are all a better people because of that. And you all wouldn't be here 
together, doing what you're doing in this school today, if that hadn't 
happened.
    But what you have to do now is to say, ``That didn't solve all the 
problems, but it got me to the starting line. It gave me a chance to 
live in an America that was more honest in living up to its creed that 
we are all equal under God. And now I have a chance, and I'm going to 
make the most of it.'' The whole future of America is riding on whether 
we can have young people who are well-educated, well-disciplined, 
hopeful about the future, and more interested in helping each other than 
hurting each other, more interested in books than guns, more interested 
in 5 years from now than 5 seconds from now. You have to do that. Your 
country is counting on you.
    I will do everything I can as President. And all these people will 
do everything they can to make sure that you have a good country to grow 
up in, that you can succeed, that you can have a good life. But a lot of 
it is in your hands. I urge you, on this 40th anniversary of one of the 
greatest decisions for freedom ever made, to stand up for your own 
freedom and make the most of it.
    God bless you, and good luck. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:45 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr., 
Middle School.