Remarks to the Delegates to the White House Conference "To Fulfill These Rights"

Mr. Randolph, Mr. Heineman, all the delegates to this Conference:

It was one year ago at Howard University that I called for a conference whose theme and title would be "To Fulfill These Rights." I said that its object would be to help the Negro American move beyond opportunity to achievement.

And now you have come tonight from every region of this great land, from every walk of life, to play your part in this momentous undertaking and in this great adventure.

You are here because you represent the humane and the progressive spirit of our people. Through two centuries of trial and triumph that spirit has moved the American democracy from an ideal to a powerful reality.

You are here tonight because your country needs your collective judgment. The dilemma that you deal with is too deeply rooted in pride and prejudice, too profound and complex, and too critical to our future for any one man or any one administration to ever resolve.

No matter how committed to its resolution, this issue is beyond the mastery of one man or one group of men.

So you are here, finally, because in your variety of background and circumstance you symbolize those who have a stake in including the Negro American in our society. And that is everybody--Negro and white, rich and poor, manager and worker, city dweller and suburbanite.

I do not mean to say that every American feels that he has such a stake, because if he did there would be no need for this Conference. Some believe that they can put enough miles or enough dollars between them and the Negro's problems to escape the consequences of those problems altogether.

Yet we know that the country is not large enough, nor any man wealthy enough, to offer or to gain a sanctuary from the effects of widespread poverty and widespread discrimination.

Some believe that the Federal Government can assume their personal responsibilities for justice to the Negro American. They contend, even when they refuse to admit it, that the mere existence of Federal funds and programs and civil rights laws makes private action unnecessary.

Yet we know that no national government, however enlightened, can by itself change the conditions of Negro life in America.

There are some who think that the Negro should be denied inclusion in our society. There are some, too, who counsel the Negro to refuse a share in the society, even where it is offered--to "go it alone," to seek and acquire power independently, so he may owe nothing to others.

Yet, I genuinely believe that our whole experience as a people is otherwise. Those who have tried to divide us have always ultimately failed. Those who have built castles of prejudice have seen them come crumbling down. Those who have whispered the counsel of despair and the counsel of separatism have been ignored.

For our beautiful America is not a planetary system with many atmospheres, and many calendars, and many temperatures. It is one large island of earth inhabited by mortal men of many races, and many faiths, and many colors of skin.

They all cry the same way. They all laugh the same way. If they are to build just and fruitful lives for themselves and their children, then they must do it here-and I earnestly believe we must do it together.

This does not require that righteous anger ever be silenced. This does not require that harmony be purchased at the price of individuals' freedom.

What it does require is a recognition that beneath the tumult of events that separate men from one another runs the thread of a common destiny. For we shall either move this Nation towards civil peace and towards social justice for all of its citizens, or for none.

We shall either find the means to open employment to all of our workers--to find decent housing for all of our families--to provide a good education for all of our American children--or we shall see the American promise spoiled for each of them.

So then let us pursue that promise not in dreary conformity, not in mutual suspicion and fear--but in the knowledge that freedom and justice cannot be the province of one race or nation alone.

In our quest of that promise, let each man give whatever he has to give.

If it be the courage to endure the scorn of bigots, let him give that.

If it be the wisdom and the patience to teach children that are born into blight and suffering, then let him give that.

If it be the chance of a job and the training it requires, then let him give that.

If it be the willingness to change old ways and to hear the cry of those in need, let him give that.

If it be the power to pass new laws, or to enforce and execute old laws with conviction and fairness and justice, then let him give that.

But men of reason who are honest with each other know that there is so much to be done that really we should have done a long, long time ago. If only then we had acted-if only then we had sought justice--we might have been spared the ordeal of conscience that has brought us in this room, together at this hour tonight.

But we did not act. For reasons of ignorance, or prejudice, or hate, or greed, or fear, or indifference, or blindness, or whatever, we waited--long--too long we have waited. And now the awakening has come.

In the last 12 years it has increased in both strength and in will. Reason has insisted that it come. Courage--of the Negro, first, and then of the white who joined the cause of justice--has swelled its ranks. And we are acting.

More has been done than men thought possible just a short time ago: in stripping away legal barriers--in opening political opportunity--in attacking the lack of skills and jobs, and education and housing that are really the taproots of poverty.

In all of these efforts we have made mistakes. And we will make others, for we know too well our own weaknesses. We will arouse hopes, as we have already done, that cannot be quickly fulfilled.

But I came here tonight--at the end of a long day--to tell you that we are moving and that we shall not turn back.

There is evidence of hope, even beyond the legislation enacted and the programs started.

Not long ago a businessman from the Middle West wrote us a letter at the White House.

He had attended our planning conference last November that many had counseled me against. They had some recommendations on this one, too.

But he had returned home filled with a new awareness of the Negro's condition in America. And he seemed to be fired with a determination--a determination to improve those conditions and to improve them in his own backyard, in his home community.

He listed 17 steps that his city had taken since last November to open up new channels of communication between the races. This man had inspired many of those steps and he had taken a part in bringing all of them about.

He did not claim that he had single-handedly changed the terms of Negro life in his city for the better, because he knows that real change--visible, lasting change-will take time and money and the work of many hands.

But he had made a start. He had planted a seed--indeed, a whole row of seeds. And years from now there will be a harvest in this city in the Middle West, a harvest of hope where there might have been a howling desert of despair and bitterness.

Not every one of us can plant as many seeds as this man did, but each of us holds one of them in his hands. And together we can make a harvest for the generations to Come.

So do not expect from me, or from any man, a miracle.

I see some of the distinguished persons here tonight from whom the hopeless people throughout this country do sometimes expect a miracle. But do not expect us, even working shoulder-to-shoulder together, to put right in 1 year or 4 all that it took centuries to make wrong.

I came here to tell you tonight that I am prepared to give my days--and such talents as I may have--to the pursuit of justice and opportunity for those so long denied them.

I will sleep tonight in the house where Lincoln slept. It was 100 years ago that a civil war was fought in this country to free the Negro from slavery. The Negro won that war, but he lost the battle still to come.

Emancipation was a proclamation, but it was not a fact. I came here tonight to tell you that in the time allotted me, with whatever energy and ability I have, I do not intend for history to repeat itself.

True, more legislation has been signed in the last few months, few years; true, Negro opportunity has been proclaimed. But we still must go on to make it a fact.

I came here to say to my friend Philip Randolph and to my friend Ben Heineman, to every man and woman at this head table, to every member of the Council, and especially to every one of the 2,500 people whose children will remember that they came and they saw and they conquered here at this Conference in Washington: that your President may not agree with everything that you do, but he will consider everything you say, and that he believes that we are approaching this in the right way.

As Jefferson said, "I prefer the recommendations of the many to the judgment of the few."

A very perceptive and unusually alert reporter--and we do have some of them--in the Cabinet Room at the White House this afternoon was quick to point out to me some developments at the Conference and to ask me what comment I had on the "great dissension" that exists.

I said, "First, I want to observe that that is something that you people never overlook." But along with that dissension are a lot of people that are plowing the furrows that are going to come up with constructive ideas, with vision, and with a platform that will bring a lot of people into agreement on goals that we have yet to achieve.

I read in a newspaper coming out tonight a very fine column by a good friend of mine of many years. He went around the world with me and I called him back from a distinguished ambassadorial post to make my first appointment to the USIA to succeed Ed Murrow.

He was relating a conversation that he had had with a Philadelphia banker. We usually think of Philadelphia lawyers. But this banker was pointing out to him that they had employed a few Negro secretaries and clerks at the bank, but they had not yet gone much further.

Carl Rowan was discussing that question. And I read on in the column, because I hoped he was going to say, before he ended, that he could give the Philadelphia banker an example. Well, we have a Negro, for the first time, on the Export-Import Bank that is dealing with all the nations of the world. We have a Negro on the Federal Reserve Board that is lending money instead of borrowing it.

Eleven percent of our population are Negroes and the Federal Government has 15 percent of its employees who are Negroes. We are proud of the work that they render.

We are not satisfied that we have attained equal and exact justice and equal employment, but I have been working at it very diligently for 5 years. And I am now going to give a good example of it, because I have a very unusual pleasure and pride to introduce to you a great soldier. I might say that the President of the United States does not often have the opportunity to introduce another speaker.

But I am glad that tonight I do have that opportunity. I am going to introduce to you one who 12 years ago established in the field of civil rights a beachhead from which we shall never retreat.

Since that day, he has already occupied two great offices--distinguished Justice of the Court of Appeals, and tonight a great Solicitor General of the United States of America. When he accepted this call and left his lifetime job to take a temporary one in this administration--not knowing how long it would be but realizing that it offered an opportunity to serve his country--I recall that he had argued already 33 major cases before the Supreme Court.

But he was really just in the kindergarten class then, because before he finishes his term he will probably have argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other American. And let no man ever say that he is not a qualified lawyer and judge.

I am very proud that he serves my administration. I am very proud that his is the voice of the people of all the United States before the highest and greatest court of this land.

And nothing, I think, could be really more appropriate than that this man should speak to the first great national conference that has ever been called to really consider the rights and the opportunities of Negro Americans.

Now I consider it my high honor and my very great privilege to present to you the man who has been in the forefront and will continue to be in the forefront of all the battles for all the things that are good for our country--Thurgood Marshall, the Solicitor General.