The President:
Thank you. (applause) Thank you so much. (applause) Thank you very much. (applause) Thank you. (applause) Please be seated. An earthquake and a hurricane
may have delayed this day, but this is a day that
would not be denied. For this day, we celebrate Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s return to the National Mall. In this place, he will
stand for all time, among monuments to those who
fathered this nation and those who defended it; a black
preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice
to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals, a man who
stirred our conscience and thereby helped make
our union more perfect. And Dr. King would be the first
to remind us that this memorial is not for him alone. The movement of which he was
a part depended on an entire generation of leaders. Many are here today, and
for their service and their sacrifice, we owe them our
everlasting gratitude. This is a monument to your
collective achievement. (applause) Some giants of the
civil rights movement -- like Rosa Parks and Dorothy
Height, Benjamin Hooks, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth --
they've been taken from us these past few years. This monument attests to their
strength and their courage, and while we miss them
dearly, we know they rest in a better place. And finally, there are the
multitudes of men and women whose names never appear
in the history books -- those who marched
and those who sang, those who sat in and
those who stood firm, those who organized and
those who mobilized -- all those men and women who
through countless acts of quiet heroism helped bring about
changes few thought were even possible. "By the thousands," said Dr.
King, "faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black
and white...have taken our whole nation back to those great wells
of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the
formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence." To those men and women, to those
foot soldiers for justice, know that this monument
is yours, as well. Nearly half a century has passed
since that historic March on Washington, a day when thousands
upon thousands gathered for jobs and for freedom. That is what our schoolchildren
remember best when they think of Dr. King -- his booming
voice across this Mall, calling on America to make
freedom a reality for all of God's children, prophesizing of
a day when the jangling discord of our nation would be
transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. It is right that we
honor that march, that we lift up Dr. King's
"I Have a Dream" speech -- for without that shining moment,
without Dr. King's glorious words, we might not have had
the courage to come as far as we have. Because of that hopeful vision,
because of Dr. King's moral imagination, barricades began to
fall and bigotry began to fade. New doors of opportunity swung
open for an entire generation. Yes, laws changed, but hearts
and minds changed, as well. Look at the faces
here around you, and you see an America that is
more fair and more free and more just than the one Dr.
King addressed that day. We are right to savor that
slow but certain progress -- progress that's expressed
itself in a million ways, large and small, across this
nation every single day, as people of all colors
and creeds live together, and work together, and fight
alongside one another, and learn together, and build
together, and love one another. So it is right for us to
celebrate today Dr. King's dream and his vision of unity. And yet it is also important on
this day to remind ourselves that such progress
did not come easily; that Dr. King's
faith was hard-won; that it sprung out of a
harsh reality and some bitter disappointments. It is right for us to celebrate
Dr. King's marvelous oratory, but it is worth remembering
that progress did not come from words alone. Progress was hard. Progress was purchased through
enduring the smack of billy clubs and the blast
of fire hoses. It was bought with days in
jail cells and nights of bomb threats. For every victory during the
height of the civil rights movement, there were setbacks
and there were defeats. We forget now, but
during his life, Dr. King wasn't always
considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence,
even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King
was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble
rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked
by his own people, by those who felt he was going
too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those
who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or
the rights of union workers. We know from his own testimony
the doubts and the pain this caused him, and that the
controversy that would swirl around his actions would last
until the fateful day he died. I raise all this because nearly
50 years after the March on Washington, our work, Dr. King's
work, is not yet complete. We gather here at a
moment of great challenge and great change. In the first decade
of this new century, we have been tested
by war and by tragedy; by an economic crisis and its
aftermath that has left millions out of work, and
poverty on the rise, and millions more just
struggling to get by. Indeed, even before
this crisis struck, we had endured a decade
of rising inequality and stagnant wages. In too many troubled
neighborhoods across the country, the conditions of our
poorest citizens appear little changed from what
existed 50 years ago -- neighborhoods with underfunded
schools and broken-down slums, inadequate health care,
constant violence, neighborhoods in which too many
young people grow up with little hope and few prospects
for the future. Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we
celebrate a man and a movement that did so much
for this country, let us draw strength from
those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us
remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple,
or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination. It took a full decade
before the moral guidance of Brown v. Board of Education was
translated into the enforcement measures of the Civil Rights
Act and the Voting Rights Act, but those 10 long years did
not lead Dr. King to give up. He kept on pushing,
he kept on speaking, he kept on marching until
change finally came. (applause) And then when, even after
the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed,
African Americans still found themselves trapped in pockets
of poverty across the country, Dr. King didn't say those
laws were a failure; he didn't say this is
too hard; he didn't say, let's settle for what
we got and go home. Instead he said, let's take
those victories and broaden our mission to achieve not just
civil and political equality but also economic justice; let's
fight for a living wage and better schools and jobs for
all who are willing to work. In other words, when
met with hardship, when confronting disappointment,
Dr. King refused to accept what he called the "isness" of today. He kept pushing towards the
"oughtness" of tomorrow. And so, as we think about all
the work that we must do -- rebuilding an economy that can
compete on a global stage, and fixing our schools
so that every child -- not just some,
but every child -- gets a world-class education,
and making sure that our health care system is affordable
and accessible to all, and that our economic system is
one in which everybody gets a fair shake and everybody
does their fair share, let us not be
trapped by what is. (applause) We can't be
discouraged by what is. We've got to keep pushing
for what ought to be, the America we ought to
leave to our children, mindful that the hardships we
face are nothing compared to those Dr. King and his fellow
marchers faced 50 years ago, and that if we
maintain our faith, in ourselves and in the
possibilities of this nation, there is no challenge
we cannot surmount. And just as we draw strength
from Dr. King's struggles, so must we draw inspiration from
his constant insistence on the oneness of man; the
belief in his words that "we are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single
garment of destiny." It was that insistence, rooted
in his Christian faith, that led him to tell a group
of angry young protesters, "I love you as I
love my own children," even as one threw a rock
that glanced off his neck. It was that insistence, that
belief that God resides in each of us, from the high to the
low, in the oppressor and the oppressed, that convinced
him that people and systems could change. It fortified his
belief in non-violence. It permitted him to place his
faith in a government that had fallen short of its ideals. It led him to see his charge not
only as freeing black America from the shackles
of discrimination, but also freeing many Americans
from their own prejudices, and freeing Americans of every
color from the depredations of poverty. And so at this moment, when
our politics appear so sharply polarized, and faith in our
institutions so greatly diminished, we need more
than ever to take heed of Dr. King's teachings. He calls on us to stand in
the other person's shoes; to see through their eyes;
to understand their pain. He tells us that we have a
duty to fight against poverty, even if we are well off; to care
about the child in the decrepit school even if our own
children are doing fine; to show compassion toward
the immigrant family, with the knowledge that most of
us are only a few generations removed from similar hardships. (applause) To say that we are bound
together as one people, and must constantly strive to
see ourselves in one another, is not to argue for a false
unity that papers over our differences and ratifies
an unjust status quo. As was true 50 years ago, as
has been true throughout human history, those with power and
privilege will often decry any call for change as "divisive." They'll say any challenge to the
existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing. Dr. King understood that peace
without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality
with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable
truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest. But he also understood that to
bring about true and lasting change, there must be the
possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to
channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality. If he were alive today, I
believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can
rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without
demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter
tough negotiations with his company's union without
vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can
argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government
without questioning each other's love for this country -- (applause) -- with the knowledge
that in this democracy, government is no distant object
but is rather an expression of our common commitments
to one another. He would call on us to assume
the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge
one another in ways that ultimately heal
rather than wound. In the end, that's what I hope
my daughters take away from this monument. I want them to come away from
here with a faith in what they can accomplish when they are
determined and working for a righteous cause. I want them to come away from
here with a faith in other people and a faith
in a benevolent God. This sculpture, massive
and iconic as it is, will remind them of
Dr. King's strength, but to see him only as larger
than life would do a disservice to what he taught
us about ourselves. He would want them to
know that he had setbacks, because they will have setbacks. He would want them to
know that he had doubts, because they will have doubts. He would want them to
know that he was flawed, because all of us have flaws. It is precisely because Dr. King
was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone
that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us
that change can come if you don't give up. He would not give up, no
matter how long it took, because in the smallest
hamlets and the darkest slums, he had witnessed the highest
reaches of the human spirit; because in those moments when
the struggle seemed most hopeless, he had seen men and
women and children conquer their fear; because he had seen hills
and mountains made low and rough places made plain, and the
crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way. And that is why we
honor this man -- because he had faith in us. And that is why he
belongs on this Mall -- because he saw what
we might become. That is why Dr. King was so
quintessentially American -- because for all the
hardships we've endured, for all our sometimes
tragic history, ours is a story of optimism
and achievement and constant striving that is
unique upon this Earth. And that is why the rest of the
world still looks to us to lead. This is a country where ordinary
people find in their hearts the courage to do
extraordinary things; the courage to stand up in the
face of the fiercest resistance and despair and say this is
wrong, and this is right; we will not settle for what the
cynics tell us we have to accept and we will reach again and
again, no matter the odds, for what we know is possible. That is the conviction we
must carry now in our hearts. (applause) As tough as times may be,
I know we will overcome. I know there are
better days ahead. I know this because of
the man towering over us. I know this because all he
and his generation endured -- we are here today in a country
that dedicated a monument to that legacy. And so with our eyes on the
horizon and our faith squarely placed in one another,
let us keep striving; let us keep struggling; let
us keep climbing toward that promised land of a nation and
a world that is more fair, and more just, and more equal
for every single child of God. Thank you, God bless you, and
God bless the United States of America. (applause)
