Edmund Pettus
Bridge
Selma, Alabama
2:17 P.M. CST
AUDIENCE
MEMBER: We love you, President Obama!
THE
PRESIDENT: Well, you know I love you back. (Applause.)
It is a rare
honor in this life to follow one of your heroes. And John Lewis is one of
my heroes.
Now, I have to
imagine that when a younger John Lewis woke up that morning 50 years ago and
made his way to Brown Chapel, heroics were not on his mind. A day like
this was not on his mind. Young folks with bedrolls and backpacks were
milling about. Veterans of the movement trained newcomers in the tactics
of non-violence; the right way to protect yourself when attacked. A
doctor described what tear gas does to the body, while marchers scribbled down
instructions for contacting their loved ones. The air was thick with
doubt, anticipation and fear. And they comforted themselves with the
final verse of the final hymn they sung:
“No matter
what may be the test, God will take care of you;
Lean, weary one, upon His breast, God will take care of you.”
And then, his
knapsack stocked with an apple, a toothbrush, and a book on government -- all
you need for a night behind bars -- John Lewis led them out of the church on a
mission to change America.
President and
Mrs. Bush, Governor Bentley, Mayor Evans, Sewell, Reverend Strong, members of
Congress, elected officials, foot soldiers, friends, fellow Americans:
As John noted,
there are places and moments in America where this nation’s destiny has been
decided. Many are sites of war -- Concord and Lexington, Appomattox,
Gettysburg. Others are sites that symbolize the daring of America’s
character -- Independence Hall and Seneca Falls, Kitty Hawk and Cape Canaveral.
Selma is such
a place. In one afternoon 50 years ago, so much of our turbulent history
-- the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war; the yoke of segregation and
tyranny of Jim Crow; the death of four little girls in Birmingham; and the
dream of a Baptist preacher -- all that history met on this bridge.
It was not a
clash of armies, but a clash of wills; a contest to determine the true meaning
of America. And because of men and women like John Lewis, Joseph Lowery,
Hosea Williams, Amelia Boynton, Diane Nash, Ralph Abernathy, C.T. Vivian,
Andrew Young, Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many
others, the idea of a just America and a fair America, an inclusive America,
and a generous America -- that idea ultimately triumphed.
As is true
across the landscape of American history, we cannot examine this moment in
isolation. The march on Selma was part of a broader campaign that spanned
generations; the leaders that day part of a long line of heroes.
We gather here
to celebrate them. We gather here to honor the courage of ordinary
Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod; tear gas and
the trampling hoof; men and women who despite the gush of blood and splintered
bone would stay true to their North Star and keep marching towards justice.
They did as
Scripture instructed: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be
constant in prayer.” And in the days to come, they went back again and
again. When the trumpet call sounded for more to join, the people came –-
black and white, young and old, Christian and Jew, waving the American flag and
singing the same anthems full of faith and hope. A white newsman, Bill
Plante, who covered the marches then and who is with us here today, quipped
that the growing number of white people lowered the quality of the
singing. (Laughter.) To those who marched, though, those old gospel
songs must have never sounded so sweet.
In time, their
chorus would well up and reach President Johnson. And he would send them
protection, and speak to the nation, echoing their call for America and the
world to hear: “We shall overcome.” (Applause.) What enormous
faith these men and women had. Faith in God, but also faith in
America.
The Americans
who crossed this bridge, they were not physically imposing. But they gave
courage to millions. They held no elected office. But they led a
nation. They marched as Americans who had endured hundreds of years of
brutal violence, countless daily indignities –- but they didn’t seek special
treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century
before. (Applause.)
What they did
here will reverberate through the ages. Not because the change they won
was preordained; not because their victory was complete; but because they
proved that nonviolent change is possible, that love and hope can conquer hate.
As we
commemorate their achievement, we are well-served to remember that at the time
of the marches, many in power condemned rather than praised them. Back
then, they were called Communists, or half-breeds, or outside agitators, sexual
and moral degenerates, and worse –- they were called everything but the name
their parents gave them. Their faith was questioned. Their lives
were threatened. Their patriotism challenged.
And yet, what
could be more American than what happened in this place?
(Applause.) What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than
plain and humble people –- unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high
station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but
many, coming together to shape their country’s course?
What greater
expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of
patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we
are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look
upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation
to more closely align with our highest ideals? (Applause.)
That’s why
Selma is not some outlier in the American experience. That’s why it’s not
a museum or a static monument to behold from a distance. It is instead
the manifestation of a creed written into our founding documents: “We the
People…in order to form a more perfect union.” “We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” (Applause.)
These are not
just words. They’re a living thing, a call to action, a roadmap for
citizenship and an insistence in the capacity of free men and women to shape
our own destiny. For founders like Franklin and Jefferson, for leaders
like Lincoln and FDR, the success of our experiment in self-government rested
on engaging all of our citizens in this work. And that’s what we
celebrate here in Selma. That’s what this movement was all about, one leg
in our long journey toward freedom. (Applause.)
The American
instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this
bridge, that’s the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over
tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew immigrants from across oceans
and the Rio Grande; the same instinct that led women to reach for the ballot,
workers to organize against an unjust status quo; the same instinct that led us
to plant a flag at Iwo Jima and on the surface of the Moon.
(Applause.)
It’s the idea
held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in
progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its
praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional
disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the
status quo. That’s America. (Applause.)
That’s what
makes us unique. That’s what cements our reputation as a beacon of
opportunity. Young people behind the Iron Curtain would see Selma and
eventually tear down that wall. Young people in Soweto would hear Bobby
Kennedy talk about ripples of hope and eventually banish the scourge of
apartheid. Young people in Burma went to prison rather than submit to
military rule. They saw what John Lewis had done. From the streets
of Tunis to the Maidan in Ukraine, this generation of young people can draw
strength from this place, where the powerless could change the world’s greatest
power and push their leaders to expand the boundaries of freedom.
They saw that
idea made real right here in Selma, Alabama. They saw that idea manifest
itself here in America.
Because of
campaigns like this, a Voting Rights Act was passed. Political and
economic and social barriers came down. And the change these men and
women wrought is visible here today in the presence of African Americans who
run boardrooms, who sit on the bench, who serve in elected office from small
towns to big cities; from the Congressional Black Caucus all the way to the
Oval Office. (Applause.)
Because of
what they did, the doors of opportunity swung open not just for black folks,
but for every American. Women marched through those doors. Latinos
marched through those doors. Asian Americans, gay Americans, Americans
with disabilities -- they all came through those doors. (Applause.)
Their endeavors gave the entire South the chance to rise again, not by
reasserting the past, but by transcending the past.
What a
glorious thing, Dr. King might say. And what a solemn debt we owe.
Which leads us to ask, just how might we repay that debt?
First and
foremost, we have to recognize that one day’s commemoration, no matter how
special, is not enough. If Selma taught us anything, it’s that our work
is never done. (Applause.) The American experiment in
self-government gives work and purpose to each generation.
Selma teaches
us, as well, that action requires that we shed our cynicism. For when it
comes to the pursuit of justice, we can afford neither complacency nor despair.
Just this
week, I was asked whether I thought the Department of Justice’s Ferguson report
shows that, with respect to race, little has changed in this country. And
I understood the question; the report’s narrative was sadly familiar. It
evoked the kind of abuse and disregard for citizens that spawned the Civil Rights
Movement. But I rejected the notion that nothing’s changed. What
happened in Ferguson may not be unique, but it’s no longer endemic. It’s
no longer sanctioned by law or by custom. And before the Civil Rights
Movement, it most surely was. (Applause.)
We do a disservice
to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are
immutable, that racial division is inherent to America. If you think
nothing’s changed in the past 50 years, ask somebody who lived through the
Selma or Chicago or Los Angeles of the 1950s. Ask the female CEO who once
might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing’s changed.
Ask your gay friend if it’s easier to be out and proud in America now than it
was thirty years ago. To deny this progress, this hard-won progress -–
our progress –- would be to rob us of our own agency, our own capacity, our
responsibility to do what we can to make America better.
Of course, a
more common mistake is to suggest that Ferguson is an isolated incident; that
racism is banished; that the work that drew men and women to Selma is now
complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those
seeking to play the “race card” for their own purposes. We don’t need the
Ferguson report to know that’s not true. We just need to open our eyes,
and our ears, and our hearts to know that this nation’s racial history still
casts its long shadow upon us.
We know the
march is not yet over. We know the race is not yet won. We know
that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged, all of us, by the
content of our character requires admitting as much, facing up to the
truth. “We are capable of bearing a great burden,” James Baldwin once
wrote, “once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality
is.”
There’s
nothing America can’t handle if we actually look squarely at the problem.
And this is work for all Americans, not just some. Not just whites.
Not just blacks. If we want to honor the courage of those who marched
that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination.
All of us will need to feel as they did the fierce urgency of now. All of
us need to recognize as they did that change depends on our actions, on our
attitudes, the things we teach our children. And if we make such an
effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed, and
consciences can be stirred, and consensus can be built. (Applause.)
With such an
effort, we can make sure our criminal justice system serves all and not just
some. Together, we can raise the level of mutual trust that policing is
built on –- the idea that police officers are members of the community they
risk their lives to protect, and citizens in Ferguson and New York and
Cleveland, they just want the same thing young people here marched for 50 years
ago -– the protection of the law. (Applause.) Together, we can
address unfair sentencing and overcrowded prisons, and the stunted
circumstances that rob too many boys of the chance to become men, and rob the
nation of too many men who could be good dads, and good workers, and good
neighbors. (Applause.)
With effort,
we can roll back poverty and the roadblocks to opportunity. Americans
don’t accept a free ride for anybody, nor do we believe in equality of
outcomes. But we do expect equal opportunity. And if we really mean
it, if we’re not just giving lip service to it, but if we really mean it and
are willing to sacrifice for it, then, yes, we can make sure every child gets
an education suitable to this new century, one that expands imaginations and
lifts sights and gives those children the skills they need. We can make
sure every person willing to work has the dignity of a job, and a fair wage,
and a real voice, and sturdier rungs on that ladder into the middle class.
And with
effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many
marched across this bridge –- and that is the right to vote.
(Applause.) Right now, in 2015, 50 years after Selma, there are laws
across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote. As we
speak, more of such laws are being proposed. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights
Act, the culmination of so much blood, so much sweat and tears, the product of
so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, the Voting Rights Act stands
weakened, its future subject to political rancor.
How can that
be? The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our
democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic efforts.
(Applause.) President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in
office. President George W. Bush signed its renewal when he was in
office. (Applause.) One hundred members of Congress have come here
today to honor people who were willing to die for the right to protect
it. If we want to honor this day, let that hundred go back to Washington
and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to
restore that law this year. That’s how we honor those on this
bridge. (Applause.)
Of course, our
democracy is not the task of Congress alone, or the courts alone, or even the
President alone. If every new voter-suppression law was struck down
today, we would still have, here in America, one of the lowest voting rates
among free peoples. Fifty years ago, registering to vote here in Selma
and much of the South meant guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar, the
number of bubbles on a bar of soap. It meant risking your dignity, and
sometimes, your life.
What’s our
excuse today for not voting? How do we so casually discard the right for
which so many fought? (Applause.) How do we so fully give away our
power, our voice, in shaping America’s future? Why are we pointing to
somebody else when we could take the time just to go to the polling
places? (Applause.) We give away our power.
Fellow
marchers, so much has changed in 50 years. We have endured war and we’ve
fashioned peace. We’ve seen technological wonders that touch every aspect
of our lives. We take for granted conveniences that our parents could
have scarcely imagined. But what has not changed is the imperative of
citizenship; that willingness of a 26-year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister,
or a young mother of five to decide they loved this country so much that they’d
risk everything to realize its promise.
That’s what it
means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America.
That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.
For we were
born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves
entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable
rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of
self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and
fight with so much passion and conviction -- because we know our efforts
matter. We know America is what we make of it.
Look at our
history. We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the
unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, and entrepreneurs and
hucksters. That’s our spirit. That’s who we are.
We are
Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and
then some. And we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law
reflected that truth. That is our character.
We’re the
immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses
yearning to breathe free –- Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost
Boys of Sudan. We’re the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande
because we want our kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to
be. (Applause.)
We’re the
slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South.
(Applause.) We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened up the West, and
countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for
workers’ rights.
We’re the
fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent. And we’re the
Tuskeegee Airmen, and the Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who
fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied.
We’re the
firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, the volunteers who signed
up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re the gay Americans whose blood
ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this
bridge. (Applause.)
We are
storytellers, writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness, and despise
hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be
told.
We’re the
inventors of gospel and jazz and blues, bluegrass and country, and hip-hop and
rock and roll, and our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless
joy of freedom.
We are Jackie
Robinson, enduring scorn and spiked cleats and pitches coming straight to his
head, and stealing home in the World Series anyway. (Applause.)
We are the
people Langston Hughes wrote of who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as
we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s
sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see
far enough.”
That’s what
America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to
define some of us as more American than others. (Applause.) We
respect the past, but we don’t pine for the past. We don’t fear the
future; we grab for it. America is not some fragile thing. We are
large, in the words of Whitman, containing multitudes. We are boisterous
and diverse and full of energy, perpetually young in spirit. That’s why
someone like John Lewis at the ripe old age of 25 could lead a mighty
march.
And that’s
what the young people here today and listening all across the country must take
away from this day. You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention.
Unencumbered by what is, because you’re ready to seize what ought to be.
For everywhere
in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there’s new ground to
cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. And it is you, the young and
fearless at heart, the most diverse and educated generation in our history, who
the nation is waiting to follow.
Because Selma
shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the
single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The
People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” (Applause.)
That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a
glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of
ours.
Fifty years
from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished, but we’re getting
closer. Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding
our union is not yet perfect, but we are getting closer. Our job’s easier
because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already
got us over that bridge. When it feels the road is too hard, when the
torch we’ve been passed feels too heavy, we will remember these early
travelers, and draw strength from their example, and hold firmly the words of
the prophet Isaiah: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their
strength. They will soar on [the] wings like eagles. They will run
and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”
(Applause.)
We honor those
who walked so we could run. We must run so our children soar. And
we will not grow weary. For we believe in the power of an awesome God,
and we believe in this country’s sacred promise.
May He bless
those warriors of justice no longer with us, and bless the United States of
America. Thank you, everybody. (Applause.)
END
2:50 P.M. CST
