 Welcome to the Civil Rights Summit as we welcome the president and first lady of the United States We shall overcome That song became an anthem for the civil rights movement And for those who fought against racial injustice Those words have special meaning on March 7th, 1965 John Lewis helped to lead a protest march for voting rights From Selma, Alabama to the state's capital Montgomery The march was brutally thwarted by Alabama state troopers in a day of infamy that became known as Bloody Sunday President Lyndon Johnson was never one to let a good crisis go to waste a Week later he used Bloody Sunday to show the need to pass the Voting Rights Act that he had proposed but that had stalled in the halls of Congress in A plea before Congress and the nation he said it is all of us Who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice? And we shall overcome John Lewis watched that speech in Selma with his mentor Dr. Martin Luther King at his side As President Johnson said those words, Mr. Lewis saw Dr. King cry for the first time We will march from Selma to Montgomery. Dr. King said with tears in his eyes The Voting Rights Act will pass Dr. King and Mr. Lewis made their march from Selma to Montgomery and President Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act if we have overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice it is largely because of the courage and fortitude of those like Lyndon Johnson Martin Luther King and John Lewis Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming to this stage Congressman John Lewis. Thank You Mark and the staff of the Lyndon Bain Johnson library my beloved friends My sisters and brothers I Have the special honor To introduce the keynote speaker for this 50 anniversary celebration of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 It is so fitting and so appropriate That President Barack Obama would join us today To honor the legacy of President Lyndon Johnson Now President Barack Obama was born into a dangerous and difficult time in American history a time when people Were arrested and taken to jail Just for sitting beside each other on a bus It was against the law For black and white people to ride in the same taxicab or stay in the same hotel People homes were bombed Their lives were threatened for taking a simple drink from the same water water fountain for sharing the same table in a restaurant or at a lunch counter There were signs everywhere They said white and colored and they imposed an unholy order on the lives of the average American citizen When President Johnson used his political power and the force of his will to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and later the voting rights of 1965 All of those signs came turning down And you will not see those signs our children will not see those signs except in a museum in a book or on a video President Lyndon Johnson This man from Texas Liberated not just a people But an intonation from the humanity a legalized segregation without the leadership a president Lyndon Johnson an Involvement of hundreds and thousands and millions of people in the civil rights movement There will be no president Jimmy Carter. No president Bill Clinton. No president Barack Obama Lyndon Johnson Using his skills and his power made it possible and when people said nothing that changed I said come and walk in my shoes and I will show you change when president Barack Obama Walked through the doors of the White House. He ushered in a time of great hope Silent prayers and deep aspiration as a nation We felt we may have finally realized the vision president Johnson had for all of us to live the idea of freedom and Eliminate injustice from our beloved country We use the liberty we gained from Johnson's legacy to elect a man with the raw courage and Intonacity to do all he could to make our society a better place And move us closer to the beloved community. I know this man This president The rock Obama You see the progress remade as a nation That he understand there's much more work to do To redeem the soul of America That is fine as president He has set his shoulders to the fly to bring about meaningful change in America by ending two wars and passing Comprehensive healthcare reform that is said. Thank you, Mr. President now my dear friends It is my great honor and pleasure To present our friend our president President Barack Obama and the first lady Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you Thank you very much Please please have a seat. Thank you. Thank you very much Please please What a singular honor it is for me to be here today. I want to thank first and foremost the Johnson family For giving us this opportunity and the graciousness with which Michelle and I have been received We came down a little bit late because we were upstairs looking at some of the exhibits and some of the private offices that Were used by President Johnson and Miss Johnson and Michelle was in particular interested to a recording in which Lady Bird is critiquing President Johnson's performance and she said come come you need to listen to this and she pressed the button and Not at her head Some things do not change Even 50 years later to all the members of Congress the Warriors for justice the elected officials and Community leaders who are here today. I want to thank you They're four days into his sudden presidency and the night before he would address a joint session of the Congress in which he once served Lyndon Johnson sat around a table with his closest advisors preparing his remarks to a shattered and grieving nation he wanted to call on senators and representatives To pass a civil rights bill the most sweeping since reconstruction most of his staff Counseled him against it. They said it was hopeless that it would anger powerful Southern Democrats and committee chairmen that at risk derailing the rest of his domestic agenda In one particularly bold aid said he did not believe a president should spend his time and power on lost causes However worthy they might be to which it is said President Johnson replied Well, what the hell's the presidency for? What the hell's the presidency for if not to fight for causes you believe in Today as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act we honor the men and women who made it possible Some of them are here today We celebrate Giants like John Lewis And Andrew Young and Julian Bond. We recall the countless unheralded Americans black and white students and scholars preachers and housekeepers Whose names are etched not on monuments, but in the hearts of their loved ones and In the fabric of the country that they helped to change But we also gather here Deep in the heart of the state that shaped him To recall one giant man's remarkable efforts To make real the promise of our family We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created to be those of us who've had the singular privilege to hold The office of the presidency know well that progress in this country can be hard and it can be slow Frustrated and sometimes you're stymied The office humbles you You're reminded daily that in this great democracy you are but a relay swimmer in the currents of history bound by Decisions made by those who came before Reliant on the efforts of those who will follow To fully vindicate your vision But the presidency also affords a unique opportunity to bend those currents by shaping our laws and by shaping our debates By working within the confines of the world as it is but also by reimagining The world as it should be this was president Johnson's genius as a master of politics and legislative process He grasped like few others The power of government to bring about change LBJ was nothing if not a realist. He was well aware that the law alone Isn't enough to change hearts and minds a full century after Lincoln's time He said until justice is blind to color until education is unaware of race Until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins emancipation will be a proclamation But not a fact he understood laws Couldn't accomplish everything But he also knew that only the law could anchor change and Set hearts and minds on a different course and a lot of Americans needed the laws most Basic protections at that time as dr. King said at the time it may be true that the law can't make a man love me But it can keep him from lynching me and I think that's pretty important and passing laws was what lbj knew how to do no one knew politics and No one loved legislating More than president Johnson. He was charming when he needed to be Ruthless when required he could wear you down with logic and argument He could horse trade And he could flatter you come with me on this bill He would reportedly tell a key Republican leader from my home state during the fight for the civil rights bill and 200 years from now school children will know only two names Abraham Lincoln and Everdurks And he knew that senators would believe things like that President Johnson liked power He liked the feel of it The wielding of it, but that hunger was harnessed and redeemed By a deeper understanding of the human condition by a sympathy for the underdog For the downtrodden for the outcast and it was a sympathy rooted in his own experience As a young boy growing up in the Texas Hill country Johnson knew what being poor felt like Poverty was so common. He would later say we didn't even know it had a name the family home didn't have electricity Or indoor plumbing Everybody worked hard Including the children President Johnson had known the metallic taste of hunger the feel of a mother's callous hands rubbed raw from washing and cleaning and Holding the household together his cousin Eva remembered Sweltering days spent on her hands and knees in the cotton fields with linden linden whispering beside her Boy, there's got to be a better way to make a living than this There's got to be a better way It wasn't until years later when he was teaching at a so-called Mexican school In a tiny town in Texas that he came to understand how much worse the persistent pain of poverty could be for other races In a Jim Crow south Oftentimes his students would show up to class hunger and when he'd visit their homes He'd meet fathers who were paid slave wages by the farmers they worked for Those children were taught he would later say that the end of life is in a beat role a spinach field or a cotton patch Deprivation and discrimination these were not abstractions To Linden Baines Johnson He knew the poverty and injustice are as inseparable as opportunity injustice are joined So that was in him from an early age now like any of us. He was not a perfect man His experiences in rural Texas may have stretched his moral imagination But he was ambitious Very ambitious a young man in a hurry to plot his own escape from poverty and To chart his own political career and in the Jim Crow south that meant not challenging convention During his first 20 years in Congress. He opposed every civil rights bill that came up for a vote Once calling the push for federal legislation of farce and ashamed He was chosen as a vice presidential nominee in part because of his affinity with an ability to deliver that southern white vote and At the beginning of the Kennedy administration. He shared with President Kennedy a caution Towards racial controversy, but marchers kept marching four little girls were killed in a church Bloody Sunday happen the winds of change blew and when the time came When lbj stood in the oval office, I picture him standing there taking up the entire door frame Looking out over the south lawn In a quiet moment and asked himself what the true purpose of his office was for What was the end point of his ambitions? He would reach back in his own memory and he'd remember his own Experience with want and he knew that he had a unique capacity There's the most powerful white politician from the south To not merely challenge the convention That had crushed the dreams of so many But to ultimately dismantle for good the structures of legal segregation He's the only guy who could do it and he knew there'd be a cost famously saying Democratic Party may have lost the South For a generation that's what his presidency was full That's where he meets his moment and possessed with an iron will possessed with those skills that he had honed so many ears in Congress Pushed and supported by a movement of those willing to sacrifice everything for their own liberation President Johnson fought for and argued and horse-traded and bullied and Persuaded until ultimately he signed the Civil Rights Act into law and he didn't stop there Even though his advisors again told him to wait Again told him let the dust settle Let the country absorb This momentous decision He shook them off The meat in the coconut as president Johnson would put it Was the voting rights act so he fought for and passed that as well immigration reform came shortly after and Then a fair housing act and then a health care law that opponents described as socialized medicine that would curtail America's freedom But ultimately freed millions of seniors from the fear that illness could rob them of dignity and security in their golden years Which we now know today as Medicare What president Johnson understood? Was that equality required more than the absence of oppression it required the presence of economic opportunity He wouldn't be as eloquent as dr. King would be in describing that linkage as dr. King moved into Mobilizing Sanitation workers and poor people's movement, but he understood that connection because he had lived it a decent job decent wages Healthcare Those two were civil rights worth fighting for an economy where hard work is rewarded and success is shared That was his goal and he knew as someone who had seen the New Deal transformed the landscape of his Texas childhood who had seen the difference electricity had made because of the Tennessee Valley Authority the transformation Concretely day in and day out in the life of his own family He understood that government had a role to play in Broadening prosperity to all those who would strive for it. We want to open the gates to opportunity president Johnson said We're also going to give all our people black and white The help they need to walk through those gates now some of this sounds familiar It's because today we remain locked in this same great debate about equality and opportunity And the role of government in ensuring each as was true 50 years ago There are those who dismiss the great society as a failed experiment and an encroachment on liberty Who argue the government has become the true source of all that ails us and that poverty is due to the moral failings of Those who suffer from it. There are also those who argue John That nothing's changed racism is so Embedded in our DNA that there's no use trying politics The game is rigged but such theories ignore history Yes, it's true that despite laws like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and Medicare Our society is still racked with division and poverty Yes, race still colors our political debates and There have been government programs that have fallen short in a time when cynicism is too often passed off as wisdom It's perhaps easy to conclude that there are limits to change That we are trapped by our own history and politics is a fool's errand and We'd be better off if we roll back big chunks of LBJ's legacy Or at least if we don't put too much of our hope Invest too much of our hope in our government. I reject such thinking not just because Medicare Not just because Medicare and Medicaid have lifted millions from suffering Not just because the poverty rate in this nation would be far worse without food stamps and head start and all the great society Programs that survived to this day. I reject such cynicism because I have lived out the promise of LBJ's efforts because Michelle has lived out the Legacy of those efforts because my daughters have lived out the legacy of those efforts because I and millions of my generation We're in a position to take the baton that he handed to us because Because of the civil rights movement because of the laws president Johnson signed New doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody not all at once, but but they swung open not just blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos and Asians and Native Americans and gay Americans and Americans with a disability They swung open for you and they swung open for me That's why I'm standing here today because of those efforts because of that legacy Means we've got a debt to pay That means we can't afford to be cynical Half a century later the laws LBJ passed are now as fundamental to our conception of ourselves and our democracy as the Constitution And the Bill of Rights They are foundational an essential piece of the American character But we are here today because we know we cannot be complacent for history travels not only forwards history can travel backwards history can travel sideways and Securing the gains this country has made Requires the vigilance of its citizens our rights our Freedoms they are not given They must be won they must be nurtured through struggle and discipline and persistence and faith and one concern I have sometimes during these moments The celebration of the signing of the Civil Rights Act the march on Washington from a distance sometimes these commemorations seem inevitable They seem easy all the pain and difficulty and struggle and doubt All that's rubbed away and we look at ourselves and we say all things are just too different now We couldn't possibly do what was done then These giants what they accomplished And yet they were men and women too It wasn't easy then It wasn't certain then the story of America is a story of progress however slow however incomplete However harshly challenged at each point on our journey however flawed our leaders However many times we have to take a quarter of a loaf for half a loaf The story of America is a story of progress and that's true because of men like president Lyndon Baines Johnson in so many ways he embodied America With all our gifts and all our flaws In all our restlessness and all our big dreams this man Born into poverty weaned in a world full of racial hatred somehow found within himself the ability To connect his experience with the brown child in a small, Texas town the white child in Appalachia The black child in Watts as powerful as he became in that Oval Office He understood them he understood what it meant to be on the outside And he believed that their plight was his plight too That his freedom ultimately was wrapped up in theirs And that making their lives better was what the hell the presidency was for and those children were on his mind when they strode to the podium that night in the house chamber When he called for the vote on the civil rights law it never occurred to me He said in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students that he had taught so many years ago and Help people like them all over this country But now I do have that chance And I'll let you in on a secret I Mean to use it And I hope that you will use it with me That was LBJ's greatness That's why we remember him and if there is one thing that he and this year's anniversary should teach us if there's one lesson I hope that Malia and Sasha and young people everywhere learned from this day It's that with enough effort and enough empathy and enough perseverance and enough courage People who love their country can change it in his final year President Johnson stood on this stage racked with pain battered by the controversies of Vietnam Looking far older than his 64 years And he delivered what would be his final public speech We have proved that great progress is possible. He said we know how much still remains to be done and if our efforts continue and If our will is strong and if our hearts are right and if courage remains our constant companion Then my fellow Americans. I am confident we shall overcome we Shall overcome the citizens of the United States Like Dr. King Like Abraham Lincoln Like countless citizens who have driven this country inexorably forward President Johnson knew that ours in the end is a story of optimism The story of achievement and constant striving that is unique upon this earth He knew because he had lived that story He believed that together we can build an America that is more fair more equal And more free than the one we inherited He believed we make our own destiny and in part because of him We must believe it as well Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America