[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 45 (Monday, November 15, 1999)]
[Pages 2307-2310]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Presenting Congressional Gold Medals to the Little Rock Nine

November 9, 1999

    The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, Senator 
Daschle, Leader Gephardt, Senator Hutchison, Senator Lincoln, Members of 
Congress, Secretary Riley, and members of the Cabinet and 
administration; a special word of thanks to Congressman Thompson and to 
my good friend Senator Bumpers.
    The great privilege of speaking last is that you get the last word. 
[Laughter] The great burden is that everything that needs to be said has 
been said. [Laughter]
    I would like to begin by introducing some people who have not yet 
been introduced but whose presence here is altogether fitting. The story 
of the Little Rock Nine, in the end, is the story of the triumph of the 
rule of law and the American Constitution which was given expression not 
only by a decision of the United States Supreme Court but by a decision 
of a President determined to enforce the rule of law.
    A couple of hours ago I had the great honor of signing legislation 
naming the Old Executive Office Building the Dwight D. Eisenhower 
Executive Office Building. President Eisenhower's son, daughter-in-law, 
and granddaughter are here, and I would like to ask General John 
Eisenhower, Joanne, and

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Susan to stand and be recognized and thank them for their presence here. 
[Applause]
    I want to thank all the previous speakers for their very moving 
words. This is a special day for me, a happy day and a sad day, an 
emotional day. I thank all of you for what you said about Daisy Bates 
who, in my years of service in Arkansas, became a good friend to Hillary 
and to me. I was privileged to go to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, 
which is built around the Lorraine Motel, when we dedicated the exhibit 
on Central High School, with the statue of Governor Faubus on one side 
and Daisy on the other. [Laughter] And even though by then she had to 
get around in a wheelchair, she got a big laugh out of that. [Laughter] 
And what a wonderful laugh she had.
    So I ask you all to remember her today, her smiling self, for that 
gave a lot of confidence to those whom we honor. Secretary Slater is 
representing the administration at her funeral today, and I thank him 
for that, because he would dearly love to be here with his friends.
    I think it was Senator Hutchinson who first mentioned that we are 
celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall today, and it 
is fitting that we, on this same day, recognize what these people did to 
make the walls of bigotry and prejudice fall in America. For when they 
marched up the steps to school, a simple act, they became foot soldiers 
for freedom, carrying America to higher ground.
    You know, when Little Rock happened, I was 11 years old, living 50 
miles away. Like every schoolchild in Arkansas, except those in 
Charleston--all six of them--[laughter]--I was--how I miss you. I miss 
doing this. [Laughter] When Little Rock happened, all the kids in 
Arkansas, white and black, we all went to segregated schools, with very 
few exceptions. And these people, they just burst in on our lives. And I 
feel like I've been walking along with them for 42 years now, because 
they forced everybody to think, you know? Before then, oh, why, you 
know, I was 11 years old, and my grandparents believed in school 
integration, and they taught me about that, and I though it was a great 
thing.
    But the truth is nobody really thought about it very much because 
segregation was a way of life, and most people just got up and went 
through their lives, and nobody questioned it. Nobody challenged it. It 
was just the way things were. It was unfortunate, but that's the way 
things were.
    And all of a sudden, they showed up, and it wasn't the way things 
were anymore. And then everyone had to decide--everyone. Everyone in 
everybody's little life--you had to decide: Where do you stand on this; 
what do you believe; how are we going to live? So these people, when 
they were young, they changed the way we were.
    I would like to say to all of you that they paid a price for doing 
that. And they look real fine sitting up here today, and they have this 
vast array of family and supporters here, and they have lived good lives 
and accomplished remarkable things. But we're giving them this medal 
because they paid the price.
    Daisy said what they endured was a volcano of hatred. And like 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they walked out without being burned. 
But they have their scars. They taught us that you can turn your cheek 
from violence without averting your eyes to injustice, and they taught 
us that they could pay their price and go on.
    On this journey that started 42 years ago, I could never have known 
that life would bring us in contact. But 12 years ago, on the 30th 
anniversary of the Central High incident, I invited them all to come to 
the Governor's Mansion. And I showed them around in the rooms where 
Governor Faubus plotted all the stratagems to keep them out of school. 
[Laughter] They got a kick out of that, and so did I. Ten years later, 
as President, I had the profound honor of going to Central High School 
to hold the doors open for them as they walked in, without incident. And 
it was great.
    That school now has a very diverse student body, and a faculty, one 
of the best records of academic excellence in our home State. It had 
then an African-American student body president, which it frequently 
does, and in all the years I was Governor, it was the only high school 
in my State and one of the few in the country where you could still 
study Greek.
    Now, we open the doors of this house. And I want to say a special 
word of thanks to the

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Speaker and the other congressional leaders for allowing us to make this 
presentation--let's not forget, this is the Congressional Gold Medal--
which the President always participates in, but usually we do it in 
their House--now, on Pennsylvania Avenue. But because of our 
relationship, Mr. Speaker and the other leaders have agreed for us to 
come here. And I thank them for that--for personal reasons, for our 
friends.
    Today we celebrate the faiths of our Founders, the faith of parents 
in their children, the faith of children in their future. We celebrate 
it because we can, and we can because these nine people helped us to 
keep it alive and to redeem it. And now, as others have said, it is for 
us to take that faith into a new millennium, once again to redeem the 
promise of our country by giving all of our children a world-class 
education and all of our people a chance to be part of our prosperity 
and by giving all of our increasingly diverse citizens a chance to be a 
part of one America.
    So in addition to giving them a medal, we ought to make that 
commitment, for like all people, we--and I certainly include myself in 
this--we all find it easy to condemn yesterday's wrongdoing. But these 
people stood up as children to condemn today's. And so let us learn from 
them and honor their example.
    The Speaker joined me in Chicago the other day, in the common cause 
of giving economic opportunity to those who haven't had it in this most 
remarkable of economic recoveries. Many of you have committed yourselves 
to opening the doors of quality education to all of our children.
    But the most important thing we have to do is to truly build one 
America in the 21st century. I want to read you something that Melba 
Pattillo Beals put in her book. ``If my Central High experience taught 
me one lesson,'' she wrote, ``it is that we are not separate. The effort 
to separate ourselves, whether by race, creed, color, religion, or 
status, is as costly to the separator as to those who would be 
separated. The task that remains is to see ourselves reflected in every 
other human being and to respect and honor our differences.''
    A couple of months ago in this very room--or a couple of weeks ago, 
actually--Hillary hosted one of our Nation's top scientists and one of 
the founders of the Internet. And they discussed the remarkable 
convergence of the explosion in computer advances with the unlocking of 
the mysteries of the human gene and the gene structure, the so-called 
genome.
    And the scientist said that if you put all the people together, and 
you had a genetic map of every individual on Earth, you would find that 
we are 99.9 percent the same genetically. Then, even more surprising 
perhaps, the scientist said, if you took a representative group of 
people of different races--if you took 100 African-Americans and 100 
Chinese-Americans and 100 Hispanic-Americans and 100 Irish-Americans--
and you put them in these little groups, you would find that the genetic 
differences within each group, from individual to individual, are 
greater than the genetic differences of one group to another. Now Melba 
knew that before the scientists found it out. [Laughter]
    I say that to make this point: Every one of us, in some way or 
another, almost every day, is guilty in some way, large or small, of 
forgetting that we are 99.9 percent the same. Every person, every 
family, every group, every nation is guilty from time to time of trying 
to give meaning to life by denigrating someone else who is different in 
some way. Honest and real differences can only be explored, confronted, 
and worked through and diversity can only be celebrated when we 
recognize that the most important fact of life is our common humanity. 
They all knew that in some instinctive way.
    The truth is almost all children know that. They have to be taught 
differently. Because so many were taught differently, it fell to these 
nine Americans when they were young, as children, to become our 
teachers. And because they taught us well, we are a better country. And 
we honor them today, but let us not forget to heed their lessons.
    The Book of Job says, ``My foot has held fast. I have not turned 
aside. And when tried, I shall come forth as gold.'' For holding fast to 
their steps, for not turning aside, we now ask these nine humble 
children, grown into strong adults, to come forth for their gold.
    Major, please read the resolution.

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[At this point, Maj. William Mullen III, USMC, Marine Corps Aide to the 
President, read the citations, and the President presented the medals.]

    The President. Now we have a special treat to cap off this event. 
But before I introduce the final presenter, I want to say again how much 
I appreciate the very large delegation from Congress from both parties 
who are here and particularly the fact that every Representative from 
our home State is here, Representative Hutchinson, Representative 
Dickey, Representative Berry, and Congressman Vic Snyder, the 
Congressman from Central High School. Thank you all for being here.
    And I want to thank the really large number of people from our home 
State, from Arkansas, who are here, many who live in Washington, many 
who have come up here from Arkansas to be here, and thank all of you for 
coming.
    And now I would like to ask Reverend Wintley Phipps to come forward 
to sing us on our way, a great gift to America. And thank you for 
sharing your time and your gift with us. God bless you, sir.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:55 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, the President referred to gospel singer Rev. 
Wintley Phipps, and civil rights activists Daisy Bates, who died on 
November 4. The Congressional Gold Medals were presented to Ernest 
Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Dr. Terrence Roberts, 
Carlotta Walls Lanier, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Gloria Ray Karlmark, 
Thelma Mothershed-Wair, and Melba Pattillo Beals, collectively known as 
the Little Rock Nine.