Remarks in Atlanta at a Breakfast of the Georgia Legislature

Governor and Mrs. Sanders, Mayor and Mrs. Allen, my dear friend and your distinguished Senator Herman Talmadge, my longtime friend and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who, together with Senator Russell, helped make Georgia the arsenal of military strength in the world, Carl Vinson--and Lynda Bird is a little sensitive about her age these days, but she could have added that the first man that I called 20 years ago (early in the morning, just as she discovered America) hollering "Hallelujah," was Carl Vinson--your own good Congressman, Charlie Weltner, my old friends John Flynt and Phil Landrum, who are out in the forefront in the leadership on our declared war on poverty, Bob Stephens, Elliott Hagan, John Davis, my old friend J. L. Pilcher, all Members of the great and influential delegation in the Congress:

Georgia, I think, could afford to hear this story that I heard Mr. Rayburn tell about Texas many years ago when they asked him why they had such an important delegation in the Congress. He said, "Well, it is a very simple formula. We pick them young, and we pick them honest, and we send them there, and we keep them there." I did everything I could to keep several of them there this year, particularly Uncle Carl, but he just wouldn't listen to me.

Before I get into my prepared speech, f want to acknowledge the generosity of the distinguished mayor of this city in presenting me these two somewhat attractive--if tigers can be attractive--tigers. I am not unaccustomed to tigers, having served in the Senate for a good many years. In the light of my experience for the last 50 days, I think they could more appropriately be named Dick and Herman, though, rather than LBJ and Lady Bird.

My life is in the hands of Georgia, and it is 24 hours a day under the direction of Rufus Youngblood, and no greater or more noble son has this State ever produced, and no braver or more courageous man.

I was brought back from the valley of death by one of your great doctors, Willis Hurst, now head of the Medical School at Emory University, when they hauled me into the Naval Hospital in 1955 with a heart attack.

So I have been long and closely associated with this great State. In the House of Representatives every honor that came my way was a result of the recognition of Mr. Vinson, on whose committee I served all the 12 years. In the Senate every honor that has come to me came to me as a result of the support and the confidence of the two Georgia Senators.

And I may say that there is no State in this Union that has ever had two more able or influential Senators than the State of Georgia.

I was a little hesitant in 1960. I didn't know just how the land lay all over this country. I came into Atlanta late one evening. We didn't plan any affair because I was afraid we wouldn't have over 100 or 200, and that would mess things up in the Eastern press.

So I pulled in here at almost midnight and the first face I saw in a crowd of some 5,000 or 10,000 was that beautiful, lovely lady, your former first Lady, Betty Talmadge. She was climbing the steps on the back end of that train to get out and look at that crowd and put her arm around Lady Bird. And she said, "I am just not going to let you come to Georgia, honey, without coming up here and seeing you and telling you how happy we are."

That was a wonderful feeling for all of us. But the real sight for sore eyes was to see Herman following along like a buck deer. Because I knew when Betty got on that platform I could put Herman in front of that microphone and Georgia would go Democratic.

We do have our differences of opinion with the Georgia delegation, and with our old friends in the Senate, but when we have those differences of opinion, we try to put them out on top of the table and reason them out together, and do what is best for America.

I am glad to be here this morning as a President of the United States who feels very much at home in Georgia. This day has been a long time coming. The second President of Texas was a son of Georgia--Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. It has taken 100 years for someone to come back here and thank you for this favor, but I am here this morning to thank you.

Coming to Georgia is a homecoming for me. My great-grandfather, Jesse Johnson, was elected sheriff of Henry County, Ga. Later the people of McDonough elected him sheriff of the Inferior Court. And thus the Johnson family really got its start in politics right here in Georgia. I am sure you never imagined what you were starting.

But I come to you today to speak to you as an American and as the President of a united Nation. My office is not a single trust for a single section or a single State. The people it serves occupy one continent. They are all ruled by one Constitution. As I am President of all the people, you are part of all the people. I speak to you not, therefore, as Georgians this morning, or as southerners, but as Americans.

But the liberty of our entire land has been consecrated with the lives and the labor, the dedication and the daring, of the sons of the great State of Georgia. Some of those sounds heard around the world were Georgia sounds. The story of our victories is washed with Georgia blood, and the role of our valiant is sown with Georgia names.

In this century, in two world wars and in Korea, half a million Georgia men went to battle. More than 5,000 of them never returned to their homes.

Georgia has bound itself to the Union not only with the conquests of its brave but with the creation of its builders, not only with arms in the midst of turmoil but with achievements in the midst of tranquility.

This is the land that Henry W. Grady of Georgia foresaw in 1886, when he came to New York and took as his text the words: "There is a South of union and freedom . . . that South, thank God, is living and breathing and growing every hour."

Not so many years ago those words seemed less a hopeful prophecy than a hollow promise. Old ways had crumbled, carrying with them that which was fine as well as that which was flaw, replaced by blighted land and a bitter people.

Franklin D. Roosevelt sent me to the South in 1936 to survey conditions in our Southern States. He sought to turn the conscience of the Nation to the cares of its neighbors.

That South then was a forgotten and forbidding land. Its mills were idle and its banks were shut. Misery was on the faces of its farmers, and hunger scarred the faces of its children. What little wealth there was trickled North, leaving the South barren of its own bounty.

Many thought that the South had suffered its final defeat. These were the faint of heart, and I was not among them, and thank God, the people of Georgia were not among them. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not among them. He came to Georgia and he said here in this State that these conditions can and must be righted, righted for the sake of the South, and righted for the sake of the Nation.

This Nation under Franklin Roosevelt forged, in the bitterness of common disaster, a new compassion which ignored old barriers of suspicion and old boundaries of section.

The results are here in the new South.

The average income in the South has increased six times since 1930, rising much faster than the national average. Malaria and pellagra are gone, and hunger is going. The acreage yield of our farms has doubled, and the gross income per farm in your State has risen eight times. Nearly every home in Georgia has water and electricity, and every child can go to school. And, at the peak of prosperity, the proportion of southern families with home freezers and air conditioners is far above the national average.

So what Henry Grady foretold has come. We see a new South. We see a "South of union and freedom." We see a "South which is living and breathing and growing every hour."

But to those who live in the present, the conquests of the past are but a spur toward the future. The South, along with all America, has many troubles. The words, the motto, of Georgia give a guide to resolution of those troubles: "Wisdom, Justice, Moderation."

The first of these is wisdom. It was in 1880 that Atticus Haygood, president of Emory College, said: "We in the South have no divine call to stand eternal guard by the grave of dead issues ."

Today the South no longer stands alone, proud in isolation, but poor in hope. Many of the old issues are dead. Your hopes are the Nation's hopes; your problems are the Nation's problems. You bear the mark of a southern heritage proudly, but that which is southern is far less important than that which is .American.

After years of ruinous and futile division, we have achieved rewarding and fruitful union. We are today one Nation, one people, one America, the envy of every nation in the world. I would not be here this morning, and I would not be looking forward to November were this not true--and I am looking forward to November.

So I say to the distinguished members of this legislature and their wives, and all of you who have come here to do me this great honor this morning; heed not those who would come waving the tattered and discredited banners of the past, who seek to stir old hostilities and kindle old hatreds, who preach battle between neighbors and bitterness between States. That is the way back toward the anguish from which we all came.

I will never feel that I have done justice to my high office until every section of this country is linked, in single purpose and joined devotion, to bring an end to injustice, to bring an end to poverty, and to bring an end to the threat of conflict among nations.

Of course I do not want to go as far as the Georgia politician who shouted from the stump in the heat of debate, "My fellow citizens, I know no North. I know no South. I know no East. I know no West." A barefooted, freckle-faced boy shouted out from the audience, saying, "Well, you better go back and study some geography."

The second quality in the Georgia motto is justice. A just society is that which meets the fair expectations of its people. I am visiting people this morning who expect much from us. I have talked with the poor of Appalachia 16 times yesterday in six States, to those whose hunger of the body brings despair of the spirit, and who live in homes that are empty of means but with hearts empty of hope and full of faith.

But I do not need to tell the people of the South what poverty means. They and their ancestors know it. I do not believe those who walk through the anguish of the Old South, who sit this morning secure in their affluence and safe in their power, will now turn from the sufferings of their neighbor. For our country has the same duty today to help the few who are poor as we did then to help the many who were poor. If a peaceful change is impossible in this country, a violent change is inevitable.

So I am going to tell the poor of Georgia, as I have told last week the poor of Pittsburgh, and yesterday the poor of West Virginia, and a few days ago the poor of Chicago, that in State capitals, in small towns, in Washington, itself, in this Nation the powerful and the strong are uniting our resources for a war which will end only when poverty itself has ended from our shores.

Justice? Justice also means justice among the races. Racial problems have deep roots in southern soils. They trouble the passion of men on the shores of Maryland also, I would remind you, in the slums of Philadelphia, and in the dark streets of New York.

In your own search for justice, the Constitution of the United States must be your guide. Georgians helped write that Constitution. Georgians have fought and Georgians have died to protect that Constitution. It has nourished the fullness of your progress and the freedom of your people. I believe Georgia will join with the entire Nation to insure that every man enjoys all the rights secured him by that American Constitution.

Because the Constitution requires it, because justice demands it, we must protect the constitutional rights of all of our citizens, regardless of race, religion, or the color of their skin. For I would remind you that we are a very small minority, living in a world of 3 billion people, where we are outnumbered 17 to 1, and no one of us is fully free until all of us are fully free, and the rights of no single American are truly secure until the rights of all Americans are secure.

Democratic order rests on faithfulness to law. Those who deny the protection of the Constitution to others imperil the safety of their own liberties and the satisfaction of their own desires. So we now move forward under that Constitution to give every man his right to work at a job. And the greatest program that is now going on in this Nation for equal employment opportunity was initiated, conceived, and born here in the great State of Georgia at the Lockheed plant, and it is a model for more than 7 million workers in all the States of this Union.

We must elect our officials, we must educate our children, we must prepare full and equal participation in the American society.

The third command of the Georgia motto is moderation. America is now beginning the quest for a great society. The barriers to this quest are high. We have farmers that are deprived of sustenance for their labors, workers deprived of labor for their sustenance. We carry the toilsome tasks of defense, while we pursue the complex cares of peace. Those who call for extreme solution can bring us only discord and disarray.

The other day, when Castro impetuously cut off our water in Guantanamo, I was called upon from all sections, but one section particularly, to please send in a division of Marines to handle that water problem. I reflected over it all night, as my Georgia ancestors would have done, and I decided the next morning, rather than send a division of Marines into Cuba, the best thing to do was to send an admiral down there to cut the water off.

Some of these men tell us to stand upon our rights, but they don't tell us how to stand up and meet our responsibilities. We can only meet our duty to our people in a partnership of moderation and cooperation between the State and the Nation, as your President is cooperating with your great Governor, between the people and the Government. Then, and only then, will our rights as States and as a country, and as free men serving a just God--only then will those rights be safe.

Over my bed in the White House in Washington I keep a little picture of the tiny, three-room home where I was born, the son of a tenant farmer who worked on the "halves"--and his cotton crop was about 8 bales a year. It reminds me every day of the people that I come from. But more important, it reminds me of the people I serve. It reminds me that a poor family who once tilled the soil of Georgia, that their descendant now leads the Nation that is great in strength and in freedom, and is determined to protect and preserve that freedom every inch of the way.

My ancestors felt free to ask their fellow Georgians for the help of their neighbors when they needed it. In the same way, I come here this morning at the invitation of your Governor to pay tribute and honor to your great legislature, and I come also to ask for your help and to ask for your prayers in a task that is shared by the people, sustained by the labor, and strengthened by the freedom of all the people of these United States.

In God's praise and under God's guidance, let all of us resolve this morning to help heal the last fading scars of old battles. Let us match united wills to boundless means, so that many years from now men will say it was at that time, in that place of free men, that the possibilities of our past turned to the grandeur of our future.

I respect the leaders of this State. I love the people of Georgia. They will always be welcome in the White House as long as I am your President, and they will always be guided by wisdom and justice and moderation. We will apply those principles to our every official act.

Lady Bird regrets she could not come here with me today. She had scheduled to come to Georgia next week. She said, "I want to go to my beautiful southland, and I want to go when I am not running for office, before I have to get on another train." So she went down to Alabama a few weeks ago and called in all of her kissing cousins and had a long visit there. And then she sat down with Mr. Jones and Senators Russell and Talmadge, Governor Sanders and others, Congressman Vinson, and worked out a visit to Georgia. She hadn't calculated this Appalachia trip. She is due to come in here Monday.

Yesterday she was told that the President had a schedule of six States, which included Georgia. She felt like Lynda Bird felt yesterday when she said I stole her lines. I know that she is going to enjoy her visit to this State, as I have. I know she is going to be stimulated and inspired by the lifetime friendships that we have here and by the new friends that we have made.

I had the great privilege last year, I want to say to the members of the legislature, of having your Governor in my home. He and Senator Russell, and Bobby Russell, and Mr. Fuqua came down and stirred up my deer and chased them around there for 2 or 3 days. I hope the Governor has a better aim in Georgia than he has in Texas.

But I must say that after a few days of practice, he did bring home his deer hide and tack it on the wall. I wasn't sure for a while that we were going to be able to accommodate one of his friends because in the many years that I have lived there, almost 56, we have tried to be hospitable to our guests and we have tried to be gracious to them. Never have I known a man to come and spend at least 2 days with us without getting his deer. But it looked like to me J. B. Fuqua was going to establish a one-time record •

So this morning I want to thank the legislature, I want to thank the Governor and Mrs. Sanders for their unusual hospitality and their kindness to me. I want to thank the State of Georgia for the kind of public servants it has provided through the years and the men who picked me up as a young boy of 27 years of age and have stood with me in sunshine and sorrow. Their voice has been the voice of reason always, their counsel has always been the counsel of wisdom.

So I come back here to the place where my ancestors started. I come back with a great deal of pride, with a great deal of respect, and with a lot of love for all of you.

Thank you.