[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 10 (Monday, March 13, 2000)]
[Pages 470-473]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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

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you 35 years ago today. I thank young Antar Breaux. Didn't he give a 
fine speech? 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 Lowrey 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 the Vice President and Mrs. Gore, who wish they could be 
here today. I thank Ambassador Sisulu for joining 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

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have swelled to nearly 9,000 black elected officials and 39 members of 
the Congressional Black Caucus.
    Today, African-Americans hold the majority in the Selma 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 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 the 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 in 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 co-workers with God.''

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    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; Rose Sanders, president, 
National Voting Rights Museum, and wife of State Senator Henry (Hank) 
Sanders; Joseph Lowrey, former president, Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference; former 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, AL; Ethel Kennedy, widow of 
Senator Robert F. Kennedy; and the following participants of the 1965 
voting rights march: Hosea Williams, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Marie 
Foster, Lillie Brown, Earnest Doyle, and Rev. J.D. Hunter.