[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 36 (Monday, September 12, 1994)]
[Pages 1740-1747]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the National Baptist Convention, USA, in New Orleans, 
Louisiana

September 9, 1994

    If I could sing like that, I would have never gotten into politics. 
[Laughter and applause] Reverend Jemison; your president-elect, Dr. 
Lyons; to Dr. Richardson, Reverend James, Dr. Mary Ross; to all the 
distinguished Louisianans here present, including Reverend Governor 
Edwards--I thought he did very well today--Senator Breaux and 
Congressman Jefferson and Mayor Morial and all your State officials and 
legislators; Reverend Jackson; to all the members of my staff and 
Cabinet who are here--where are the people here with the administration? 
They're all here somewhere.
    I want to say many things, but first we have a duty, I think, as 
Americans to take a moment of silence now for the 131 people who were 
killed in that awful air crash in Pittsburgh. Hillary and I send our 
deepest sympathies and our prayers to the friends and the loved ones of 
the crash victims. And I know that all of you and all Americans also 
send your prayers to the grieving.
    Our Secretary of Transportation, Secretary Pena, is there in 
Pittsburgh. I have talked with the mayor and the Governor this morning 
and with Senator Wofford. All Americans should know that we will do 
whatever we can to assure their safety in travel. But let us today, in 
the painful recognition of our fallibility as human beings, mourn with a 
moment of silence those who lost their lives.
    Amen.
    Well, Dr. Jemison, I thank you for that warm introduction. I have 
known you as a friend for a long time. When we were standing outside, 
about to come up, he was reviewing his more than 50 years in the 
leadership of this great church. That's a long time, worthy of honor, 
and I give it.
    Two years ago I had a great moment with all of you in Atlanta when I 
was running for President. And last year I was invited to appear, and I 
couldn't. I had to give my regrets. I sort of felt like the boy who 
skipped Sunday school. [Laughter] I promised Dr. Jemison I'd be here 
this year no matter what, so I showed up, and I hope you have forgiven 
me because I feel at home.
    Two years ago I came to you, and you responded. I asked you to work 
with me to give us at least a chance to change the direction our country 
was headed in. We had too much debt and too few jobs. We seemed to be 
going in the wrong direction, where ordinary Americans were ignored and 
people with money and organized power were heeded, but somehow the thing 
was not working. As the Vice President used to say, ``What ought to be 
up was down, and what ought to be down was up.'' And that was a problem. 
I wanted a chance to try to move this country forward again and to try 
to pull our country together again.
    Today, having served now for not quite 2 years, I guess what I want 
to say to you is I think we're doing a pretty good job of moving forward 
but not nearly a good enough job of coming together.

[[Page 1741]]

    I have here in the front some of my friends and former employers 
from the State of Arkansas. Would you all stand up? Thank you and bless 
you for being here.
    I lived in a little State to the north of here for a while, you 
know. And I learned that it was not healthy to say one thing to one 
group and one to another. You had to say the same thing to everybody and 
mean it every day.
    I never will forget when I was running for President, one of the 
most memorable days I had was speaking on one day of the weekend in 
Macomb County, Michigan, the prototypical, what they used to call 
``Reagan Democrat county,'' where there was a lot of what they used to 
call ``white flight.'' And then the next day I went to a black church in 
Detroit where half the people were from Arkansas. And I gave the same 
speech I had given the day before, and people thought that was strange. 
And I said, ``Is it so strange that we should say the same thing to all 
Americans and try to come together?''
    I want to talk to you today about that. I still believe what I 
believed 2 years ago, that the Government has a role to play in the 
future of this country and the future of our families and our hopes and 
our dreams, not as savior but not on the sidelines, just as a partner in 
progress. I still believe that, together, we can meet every challenge, 
that we can fulfill the hopes of our children. I still believe there are 
a lot of things we have to do that go way beyond the reach of Government 
into the depths of the human spirit.
    Today I say to you again, I think we're making a lot of progress, 
and I feel good about that. But I don't think we're doing as well as we 
should in coming together. And I don't feel good about that, and I want 
to examine that and what I could do better and what you can do better.
    I noticed a columnist wrote the other day in the newspaper, he said, 
``There's lots of things going right in this country. The economy is 
booming. We've got over 4 million new jobs. The stock market is up. The 
deficit is down. Things look good in the future. Our country was just 
rated the most productive country in the entire world for the first time 
in nearly 10 years.'' We've got over 4 million new jobs, as I said, the 
unemployment rate is down. A lot of things are going well.
    We see around the world real progress: peace in the Middle East, in 
the Holy Land, something that should gladden the heart of every 
Christian. We see peace prospects are moving forward in Northern 
Ireland, something many of us thought we would never see. We see the 
majesty of peace and democracy and freedom unfolding in South Africa. 
And I want to thank Reverend Jackson for his leadership of our election 
team over there in South Africa, during that process.
    And, so the writer said--he was writing about me--he said, ``If 
things are going so well, why are people still mad at the President?'' 
Well, what he might have said is, you remember that old saying, ``If I'm 
so rich, why am I not happy?'' [Laughter]
    Well, there are a lot of reasons for that. But let me offer one. I 
just got back from vacation, and when I was on vacation, I went to 
church and I heard a minister I'd never seen before from a little town 
in New Jersey called Red Bank. You know where Red Bank, New Jersey is? 
[Applause]
    The first thing he did was give us dispensation for being on 
vacation, which I felt good about. He said, ``Life is not all work. It 
is also play and rest and worship.'' But he went on to say, ``It's not 
only important to do all those things but to get them right. And if you 
don't have faith, you won't have the rhythm right. You will find 
yourselves working at play and playing at worship, and you'll have it 
all messed up.''
    Well, that's kind of what's going on in our country today. We still 
haven't quite got the rhythm right. So that even though we are facing a 
lot of our most profound problems and even though we are clearly making 
progress in areas too long ignored, which many of you have mentioned 
here, we have to say: What is the real deal here? Why aren't we happier 
about it?
    There are many reasons, but let me offer three. One is, whenever 
periods of profound change occur in the lives of individuals or nations, 
they are unsettling. Isn't that right? Can't you think of times in your 
own life when you were making a change, and every day you woke up and it 
was like there was this scale inside your body. And on one side

[[Page 1742]]

of the scale was hope, and on the other side of the scale was fear, and 
it seemed like every day, the scales would be in a little bit different 
balance until you finally got through this change you were going 
through.
    We can all identify with that. That's what's going on in this 
country today. It's happened before. At the end of the First World War, 
we won this great battle, and we didn't know what to do with ourselves, 
and so we just came home and folded up our tents. We thought we could 
withdraw from the world. And what happened? That's when the Ku Klux Klan 
first started rising up. At the end of the First World War, when we lost 
our concentration, and we lost our way, and we didn't know who the enemy 
was anymore. It's also when we had the first Red Scare, when everybody 
began to be accused of being a Communist if they had unconventional 
opinions.
    Then, at the end of the Second World War, the same sort of thing 
happened, except we knew better than to withdraw from the world. Harry 
Truman said, ``No, no, we're going to rebuild the country here at home 
for the soldiers and their families, and we're going to rebuild our 
enemies, Germany and Japan, and our Allies in Europe. And we know who 
the enemy is. It's the Soviet Union and communism. So we're going to 
have a great wall against communism, and we're going to fight this cold 
war.''
    But still, there was uncertainty. There was a new Red Scare, which 
came to its height under Senator McCarthy. And Harry Truman had a hard 
time getting people to change. You know, he was at 80 percent approval 
in the polls after he dropped the bomb which ended the war, but by the 
time he sent the second health reform legislation to Congress--that's 
how long we've been trying to fix the health care system--by the time 
Harry Truman did it the second time, he was down to 36 percent in the 
polls. Now, everybody talks about him like he ought to be on Mount 
Rushmore. [Laughter] But I was for a family who supported him when he 
was living, and I know what happened.
    Change is difficult. And when you're going through a period of 
change, we are vulnerable to getting out of our rhythm.
    The second problem is, we live in a time which almost seems to 
glorify the negative, the cynical, don't we? [Applause] It's the old 
story. There's a lot more people prone to see the glass of water is half 
empty than half full than there used to be, and to tell all the rest of 
us we're just fools if we see it half full; it's really half empty.
    And then, frankly, let's face it: We still have some problems that 
are real deep in this country that all the progress we're making does 
not necessarily touch. We have 4.1 million new jobs. The work force is 
expanding more rapidly than it did 10 years ago, the last time we had 
any kind of economic recovery, but lots of folks still out of work. A 
lot of folks live in places where they don't believe new jobs are 
coming. A lot of people are working harder; they have their job, but 
they don't think they'll ever get a raise. Five million, five million 
people live in working families who had health insurance 5 years ago, 
who do not have it today.
    So we have some real problems. Governor Edwards alluded to the most 
heart-breaking of all, those that involve the children of this country, 
their sins and their abuses and their loss of their childhood and their 
innocence, and our loss of their future: The 11-year-old boy in Chicago, 
Robert Sandifer, who sprayed gunfire at a group of kids and killed a 14-
year-old girl and then was killed himself, his grandmother saying, ``I 
could not reach you.'' And then in New Jersey, the 13-year-old who stole 
a gun to end a petty argument and the life of his 11-year-old friend. In 
Detroit, Rosa Parks was attacked by a crack addict for $53. In my 
hometown, an 82-year-old woman, attacked by two teenagers, brutalized 
and sexually molested--82 years old.
    These aren't Baptist problems or Catholic problems or Jewish 
problems. Contrary to what some people say, they're not black or white 
problems. No, the 11-year-old in Chicago was black, but the teenager in 
New Jersey who killed and the victim were both white. Rosa Parks is a 
hero to African-Americans and a hero to people who have been oppressed 
throughout the world, but the 82-year-old woman in my hometown was a 
white lady, and so were the people who attacked her.

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    These problems and the problems behind them that brought the 
children to the miserable point in life where they did what they did, 
these are the things that are gnawing at our spirit that we have to 
address so we can get the rhythm right, we can go on and face the 
challenges of this time, all the changes. And we can make change our 
friend if we know that we are grounded. That is what your faith is 
about. But it is also now what our citizenship must be more about.
    I note that there are many voices from all sectors preaching to us 
today about the decline in our values. In a way I welcome them all. And 
whether they are traditionally our allies or our adversaries, we should 
listen for the truth of their words, and if they are true, we should 
heed them.
    On the other hand, I would issue two cautionary notes: We should not 
let the voices of despair make our insecurities even deeper. That is 
wrong. That is wrong. There have always been problems in every society, 
and there will be until the end of time. That is the lesson of the 
Scripture. So for all the people who try to use the difficulties of the 
moment to dampen the energies of Americans, to defeat our spirits, I 
say, that is wrong. The Scripture says, ``Let us not grow weary in well-
doing for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.''
    The darkness of every storm provides a new chance for renewal, every 
storm. And so does this one. So to all those who preach that we need to 
return to the values of our faith, I say, we do. But the real issue is, 
what are we going to do about it? Not what are we going to say about it, 
but what are we going to do about it? The saying is important, for we in 
words come to visualize the future. And we need the vision so that we do 
not perish. But we must act on the vision. And that's where all the 
problems come.
    You know the old story about the preacher who was preaching his best 
on Sunday morning and thought he had finally reached everybody in the 
service? And he said, ``I want everybody who wants to go to heaven to 
stand up right now.'' And everybody in the whole church stood up except 
Sister Jones, who had not missed a day in church in 40 years. And he was 
crestfallen. It broke all his concentration. He stopped the sermon. He 
said, ``Sister Jones, you have not missed a sermon in 40 years. Do you 
mean to tell me you do not want to go to heaven when you die?'' And she 
popped right up, and she said, ``Oh, I'm sorry, preacher, I thought you 
were trying to get up a load to go right now.'' [Laughter]
    Now that's a big problem, isn't it? We all want to do it somewhere 
down the road, but if we have to do something right now, well that's 
something we better think about. So the challenge is, what are we going 
to do right now? Not later, but now, right now.
    I say this to the people who always say the glass is half empty, 
always being pessimistic, always being negative. They have it easy. That 
lets you out of any responsibility at all. You adopt a pessimistic, 
negative attitude; you be cynical. It just relieves you of any 
responsibility for doing because then doing doesn't matter. Right? All I 
can tell you is, there would be no free Americans sitting in this place 
today if the pessimists and the cynics and the negative people had ruled 
this country all along the way.
    Our obligation and our power flows out of two simple lessons I was 
taught about our whole civilization many years ago in college. One is 
that the future can be better than the present, not perfect but better. 
And the second is that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility 
to make it so. That is the simple lesson that will get our rhythm back, 
that will put us back in harmony, that will enable us to enjoy our 
progress and still keep working on the deep and profound things that are 
challenging us and dealing with the unsettling impact of this changing 
time.
    My vision is that we will go into the 21st century as a country more 
free, more prosperous, more united, and more open to making change our 
friend than we have ever been.
    Yes, we are beginning to see results. Yes, the economy is doing 
better. Yes, we are seeing more fairness as well as more progress. We 
did raise taxes on the wealthiest 1\1/2\ percent of Americans to bring 
the deficit down, but we also gave tax cuts to 15 million working 
families just above the poverty line to say, ``You got off welfare; 
you're working; we're going to reward you being a parent and a

[[Page 1744]]

worker.'' We did that. We are making progress.
    We got 180,000 more kids in Head Start. We're going to immunize a 
couple of million more children so that by 1996 all the kids 2 years of 
age and less, like this little kid here, will have their shots. We're 
doing more to provide job training for people who lose their jobs, and 
we made 20 million Americans eligible to refinance their college loans 
at lower interest rates with a longer repayment term. These things are 
important. They matter.
    Work, the dignity of work is central to our ability to build a 
future. The second thing we have to do is not just talk about how we 
need stronger families but think about what I can do and you can do to 
make them stronger. We didn't cut taxes for those 15 million working 
families for just political reasons. We did it because people have got 
to be able to succeed today as workers and as parents. And if we want 
people to work and parent, we have to reward work. That's why the Family 
and Medical Leave Act was so important. How can you say you want people 
to be good family members and then fire them if they have to take a 
little time off to have a baby or take care of a sick parent?
    There's a bill in the Congress I really believe in, sponsored by 
Senator Metzenbaum, to make adoptions easier and to make it possible for 
people to adopt children across racial lines if nobody else is there 
wanting to adopt the children. Don't leave kids in the limbo of foster 
care for years and years and years. Give them a chance to do it.
    The third thing we have to do is to make our communities stronger. 
We have to act as if we believe what we talk about all the time, that 
we're all in this together. The Secretary of Housing and Urban 
Development is here today. Henry Cisneros has done more to come up with 
a program to end homelessness than anybody in the last 10 years. We've 
been talking about it. He's trying to do something about it. It makes us 
stronger as a community.
    The welfare reform bill is about community, empowering everybody to 
participate. The enterprise zones are about giving poor communities the 
incentive to draw capital to put people to work. These things will make 
our communities stronger.
    And the crime bill was about communities. Because if your streets 
aren't safe, if people don't feel secure, it's hard to call them to 
higher citizenship. What did Edwin Everett say, ``If you've got the 
right to vote but you're scared to go to the polling place, it's hard to 
talk about citizenship.'' That's why it was important.
    We're also trying to change the way Government works, reforming the 
way we finance our campaigns and try to at least tell you what the 
lobbyists are doing in Washington with new disclosure requirements, a 
bill that would make Congress live under all the laws it imposes on you. 
That's not a bad idea, I think. These things are important.
    We're trying to prove something that I always believe, that you can 
have diversity and excellence at the same time. Look at our Cabinet: 
five African-Americans, more than twice as many as ever served; 15 
percent of all appointments, more than twice as many appointments to the 
Federal courts as the last three Presidents combined are African-
Americans. But what really ought to make you clap is that these judges 
have the highest percentage of ``well-qualified'' ratings by the 
American Bar Association since they have been giving out the ratings. 
They're not just from different racial groups and men and women; they're 
well-qualified.
    So there are things that Government can do. This crime bill I want 
to talk about because it runs into the question of harmony. There are a 
lot of things the Government can't do, or there are things the 
Government can do, and it's still not enough. I know that crime bill 
wasn't perfect. And I know it imposed great, great challenges for the 
African-American Members of Congress and for many people and religious 
faiths because it contains capital punishment provisions. And many 
people oppose capital punishment for everyone, and many others say that 
African-Americans are more likely to get the penalty because poor folks 
are more likely than non-poor folks to be convicted and sentenced to 
death. I know that there are those who say that when we build more 
prisons and make sentences for repeat offenders longer and

[[Page 1745]]

tougher, that will have a disproportionate impact on the African-
American community.
    But to that, I say this: Every time you look at the evening news, 
there's another funeral. And there's a disproportionate number of black 
kids lying in those pine boxes, too. And that's wrong. That's what's 
really wrong. And we have got to find a way, imperfect though it is, to 
get all the Americans together, with all their different perspectives, 
and move forward on this issue, because if people are not safe, we're in 
trouble.
    And if we put the 100,000 police on the street and do it right, 
they'll prevent crime, not just catch criminals. If we get these assault 
weapons off the street--and it's now illegal for kids to own handguns--
if we start enforcing that law, and if we do something with that 
prevention money, if we give these kids something to say yes to, if we 
do something with the job money, with the job training money, with the 
drug treatment money, with the recreation money, if we give people at 
that time of their lives when they've got all this energy some 
constructive outlet for it, it will make a difference.
    But if you really want it, to lower the crime rate, reduce violence, 
and save more kids' lives, all the work is still to be done. All the 
work is still to be done. And it's like asking Sister Jones to go to 
heaven; we've got to do this right now. If we believe there is a crisis 
of the spirit, a crisis of values in this country, we have to do 
something about it right now. And we've got to do it where we live.
    I would like to suggest just four simple things that go beyond 
Government programs. And you know them all, and many of you are doing 
them all. But every American can make a contribution. We are raising a 
whole generation of kids who aren't sure they're the most important 
person in the world to anybody.
    Now, consider this: Today, about 40 percent of all children are born 
in the homes where there was never a marriage. Twenty-seven percent of 
all pregnancies end in abortion. I don't care what your position is, 
whether you're pro-choice or anti; that's too many. That's not about 
serious health problems or emotional problems. So when the miracle of 
conception occurs, less than half of those miracles wind up being babies 
born into homes where there's a mother and a father and where the kid's 
got a better-than-even chance of having the life that most of us have, 
or we wouldn't be here in our neckties and nice dresses today. Now, 
that's just a fact.
    Dr. King once said, ``Whom we wish to change, we must first love.'' 
And I know not everybody is going to be in a stable, traditional family 
like you see in one of those 1950 sitcoms, but we'd be better off if 
more people were. I was raised by a wonderful mother who worked, who 
cared for me, who was a widow when I was born, went through a difficult 
marriage. And at least every now and then I find somebody who thinks I 
turned out all right, so it can happen. But we have to say, who is going 
to care for these children? In every single study that's ever been done 
of young people who did well against all the odds with terrible 
circumstances and all the things that could have gone wrong, it is 
always, always, always the case that they had a relationship with 
somebody who cared about them, somebody.
    I don't think we ought to give up on families. Yesterday I met with 
a number of ministers. And one friend of mine who pastors a massive 
church in the Washington area, an African-American church, has made the 
mission of his church the rebuilding of the family. Over 40 percent of 
the members are male, and he left our breakfast to go back to meet with 
150 couples who had split up or never married. Some of them were 
divorced. Sometimes people had flown in from thousands of miles away. He 
was trying to get them back together for the children's sake and because 
it was the right thing to do. We need to do more of that. But he's not 
just talking about it, he's doing something.
    If that's not an option, then somebody's got to love these children. 
When I was in Des Moines, Iowa, in the campaign, I saw a white lady 
holding an African-American baby that had AIDS. She was from Iowa. The 
kid was from Miami. She had been abandoned by her husband. She had two 
children of her own. She was living in an apartment house, working at a 
meager job. She thought it was God's will that she take a child who

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was sick and abandoned. And she did it. If she could do it, a lot of the 
rest of us should as well.
    Someone has got to care for these children. I've heard Reverend 
Jackson talk about this. I think about it all the time as my daughter 
grows up. We have to find--in families where the mother is doing all the 
work, then there needs to be somebody outside the family, a male figure, 
who can at least relate to children, who can say things like, ``What are 
you reading?'' and ``How are you doing in class?'' ``This is right, and 
this is wrong.'' ``I'd like to see your report card.'' ``What do you 
want to do 5 years from now?''
    You know, how many children do we know--how many children, how many 
of these kids that are shooting one another never think about 5 years 
from now? The future to them is 5 minutes from now. Why is that? Because 
no one is asking them about it. Where there is no vision, people perish. 
They cannot visualize 5 years from now. So that's the first thing.
    The second thing we've got to do is help these kids at least grow up 
without fear, which means we've got to keep them from getting shot and 
stop them from shooting. And laws can help, and policemen can help, but 
every 2 hours in this country another kid under the age of 19 dies from 
gunfire. A 9-year-old boy wrote me from this city right here in New 
Orleans and said, ``Please do something about this. I'm afraid I could 
get killed.'' And on Mother's Day, a month after he wrote me, he got 
killed just walking home from school.
    Now, there are things people can do in their neighborhoods to stop 
this. We are giving you more tools in terms of the laws and the police, 
but we've got to have help. Schools can be made safer. Walking routes 
can be made safer. Use the crime bill funds--the churches are eligible 
to participate--and give kids something to do after school to get them 
off the street where they can be in recreation. I got so tired, when we 
were debating that crime bill, hearing people badmouth midnight 
basketball. I'd a lot rather have somebody shooting hoops than shooting 
bullets. But you have to make that work.
    The third thing I would say is, we have to be more honest. Sometimes 
it is almost embarrassing, I know, but we've got to be more honest with 
our young people in teaching them to respect themselves, their bodies, 
their souls, and their futures. And we always talk about how 
irresponsible it is for young men to father these children and run off, 
but we've got to get more young women to make a different choice in life 
too. We have simply got to find a way to deal with this.
    Thirty years ago one of 40 white births was out of wedlock; now it's 
one in five. Thirty years ago, one in five African-American births was 
out of wedlock; now, over half. But the white out-of-wedlock birthrate 
is growing much faster than the African-American rate. So, we are going 
to have equal opportunity for all before you know it. [Laughter]
    You're laughing to keep from crying, but it's not funny, is it? 
We're going to see a merger of this. No more race discrimination; more 
than half of everybody's babies will be born where there was never a 
marriage. That is a disaster. It is wrong, and someone has to say, 
again, ``It is simply not right. You shouldn't have a baby before you're 
ready, and you shouldn't have a baby when you're not married. You just 
have to stop it.'' We've got to turn it around.
    Now I want to make it clear we shouldn't stigmatize these babies, 
and when they're born, we should take care of them. We ought to love the 
babies. We ought to love the parents. We ought to give them the best 
future we can, but we have to tell people, look at the facts. Look at 
what happens to people. Look at their incomes, their education levels, 
their future. We've got to get people out of thinking that the future is 
5 minutes away and to realize it is 5 years or 10 years or 20 years 
away. And you have to do that. I'll try to do my part, but this is not a 
Government deal. This is the way people are behaving, as if there was no 
respect for themselves and no future. We have to stop.
    Finally, let me say, I ask you to help lead us in bringing back an 
ethic of service to this Nation. We're going to kick off our national 
service program on Monday, which will this year involve 20,000 young 
Americans in serving their community, many of them in church

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groups. The Congress of National Black Churches is an active participant 
in national service. We want kids working with churches to solve a lot 
of these problems and earning credit for their college education. Year 
after next we'll have 100,000 young people. You can put them to work. 
When people are serving one another, when they're acting as role models, 
they'll be better people themselves. And you can do that.
    All these things you can do: help our kids be safer, help make sure 
every child is loved by somebody and disciplined by somebody and cared 
for by somebody, and help our kids change this culture which is ending 
family life and childhood as we know it and bring us back to the spirit 
of service.
    Finally, let me say this: I came here to say this because I don't 
believe in preaching at people. I believe you are the heroes of this 
whole thing. A lot of you have been out there like the little Dutch boy 
with your thumb in the dike against all these forces for years. A lot of 
you have been doing these things. A lot of you have run the day care 
centers and run the recreation programs and run the prison ministries 
and counseled the young people. You have done this. But America now 
knows that we must all do this.
    So I say, I honor you. I honor the members of your church that get 
up and go to work every day and follow the law and pay their taxes and 
do their best to raise their kids. And let us say for the record, since 
all America is watching this, most of the members of your church do 
exactly that. They play by the rules, and they work hard, and they do 
their best.
    But let's not kid each other, folks. I'm going to go back to 
Washington. And I'll keep trying to create jobs. And we'll do a good job 
of that. And we'll open America to the world. I'll keep working for 
peace and freedom around the world. I'll keep working for better 
education and training opportunities. I'll keep trying to solve this 
terrible riddle of why we can't get jobs in the inner city and poor 
rural areas. And we'll try to find ways to do that. But in the end, if 
we're going to get the rhythm right, if we're going to enjoy the 
progress we're making, even in an imperfect world, we have to get the 
bedrock right. We have to know that the spirit that we believe in is 
rifling through this country and is going to work.
    You know, Paul, St. Paul, was not Timothy's father, but he was his 
spiritual father. And he said, ``When I call to remembrance the 
unfeigned faith that is in thee, I put thee in remembrance that thou 
stir up the gift of God which is in thee.'' I believe and you believe 
that every child has a gift of God within them. When the gift dies, it 
is our sin as well as theirs and our loss as well as theirs.
    So let us leave here resolved to stir up the gift of God that is 
within us and do those things that will enable us to go forward with joy 
and confidence to make the future what it ought to be.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 11:10 a.m. in the Ernest N. Morial 
Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to Rev. Theodore J. 
Jemison, president, and Rev. Henry J. Lyons, president-elect, National 
Baptist Convention, USA; Rev. A. Lincoln James, president, Sunday School 
Congress; Dr. Mary O. Ross, president, Women's Auxiliary; New Orleans 
Mayor Marc H. Morial; and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Shadow Senator, District 
of Columbia.