WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Good morning and thank
you for inviting me to be with you. It's a privilege to be here at the
historic Shiloh Baptist Church, and to celebrate the important work done by
those like Reverend Smith and the volunteers at the Male Youth Enhancement
Project. And it's a particular honor to share the podium today with Ted
Shaw of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
We're here today, like people all across our nation this weekend, to
honor the life and the vision of a great American: the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
This Monday marks the twenty-second year that we will pay formal
tribute to Dr. King and his legacy -- and the second time we do so since
mourning the loss of Coretta Scott King, whose role we are also justly
honoring today. Martin Luther King Day has become an annual occasion when
we, as a nation, are made to pause and take stock of how far we have come
in fulfilling Dr. King's dream of equal rights and freedom for all; and of
how much further we have to travel.
As we take stock this year, there is some cause for optimism and
celebration. The progress our country has made since Dr. King's untimely
and tragic death forty years ago this April has been in some ways
monumental, even if at times halting and imperfect. We can measure that
progress not just by the list of distinguished African Americans who have
served at all levels and in all branches of our local, state, and national
governments, or even by the number of schools that have been opened and
improved, but also by the number of students taking advantage of the rights
he fought so hard to secure. Not just by the improved access for all
Americans to the right to vote, but also by the number of ballots cast.
But, however much progress we have made, however far we have come,
there is still a distance to go. We all recall Dr. King's famous statement
that, in his words, "[a]n injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere." And there, most certainly, is still injustice in this great
country.
Although Jim Crow laws and "Whites Only" signs thankfully no longer
exist, racism and discrimination no doubt remain, as horrid symbols like
nooses, cross burnings, and swastikas vividly remind us. Although American
citizens are no longer routinely denied entrance to the polling booth based
on the color of their skin, subtler forms of voter discrimination persist,
and require appropriate action.
Moreover, as Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King both recognized,
the goal of equal rights and freedom for all also calls for attention to
ills like crime and, in Dr. King's words, "debilitating and grinding
poverty." Dr. King eloquently called on us to remain, as he put it,
"dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought
into the metropolis of daily security." And although many more today than
in Dr. King's time live in that "metropolis of daily security," we must
remain, as he put it, "dissatisfied."
The need for programs like the one here at Shiloh shows that too many
of our nation's citizens live in fear of violence, whether from gangs or
other violent crime. Too many of our nation's youth lack the educational
opportunities that are a key to hope.
As I said earlier, the annual tribute to Dr. King calls upon each of us
to take stock of what work remains to be done. That call has taken on
greater significance for me personally this year. Last Martin Luther King
Day, I was a private citizen in New York City -- a lawyer in a city with no
shortage of lawyers. Today, I am a lawyer in another city that also has no
shortage of lawyers, but I am no longer a private citizen. I have an
extraordinary opportunity and a daunting task: to lead the Department of
Justice.
The Department of Justice occupies a special place in the fight to make
Martin Luther King's dream a reality. Justice is not merely the
Department's name -- it is its mission. And central to that mission is the
vigorous enforcement of our nation's civil rights laws.
A half century ago, the Department formed a Division devoted to the
cause of civil rights. Thanks in large part to Dr. Martin Luther King and
the heirs of his legacy, including Coretta Scott King whom we also
celebrate at this breakfast, it seems impossible today to imagine the
Justice Department without the Civil Rights Division. In many ways, in just
50 years -- that is, within my lifetime -- the work of the Civil Rights
Division has come to symbolize what the Department of Justice is all about.
Through the Civil Rights Division, the Department of Justice has given real
substance to Thomas Jefferson's declaration, which was shamefully
disregarded in Dr. King's time, that we are all created equal.
The early days of the Civil Rights Division were a turbulent and
violent time in our nation's history, a time when Martin Luther King's
optimism in America and his commitment to non-violent social change were
all the more remarkable. When James Meredith became the first
African-American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi in
1962, the Civil Rights Division was there. John Doar, the Assistant
Attorney General for Civil Rights, confronted Mississippi's Governor when
the Governor resisted attempts to desegregate the University. After riots
broke out on the campus, wounding 160 United States Marshals, Doar
literally lived with James Meredith to ensure his safety.
Today's confrontations may be less dramatic. But, as in John Doar's
time, those in the Department of Justice are vigilant in doing what law and
justice require. Under the leadership of men and women like Grace Chung
Becker, the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and nominee
for that position who is here with her family today, the Civil Rights
Division remains at the forefront of the fight for equal rights and freedom
for all.
The Division touches nearly every facet of American life, from
education to employment, from housing to religious liberties, and from
public accommodations to voting. This fall, for example, the Civil Rights
Division will play a crucial role through monitors and other means in
assuring that the laws are scrupulously observed as our nation chooses a
new President. And the Division vigorously prosecutes bias-related violence
and racially motivated official misconduct.
The Division not only deals with the injustices of the present; it also
does not forget the injustices of the past. For example, last year, it
secured the conviction of James Seale, a former Ku Klux Klan member, for
two brutal killings in 1964. Such cases vividly illustrate Dr. King's
observation that, as he eloquently put it, "the arc of the moral universe
is long, but it bends toward justice."
That the Civil Rights Division can continue to function as it does,
pursuing the many cases it brings, in large measure gives testimony to the
genius of Dr. King, who saw the law as the best instrument for beating back
the evils of racial strife and group discord. When we think of what we have
seen, and what we continue to see, in the history and experience of racial
and religious discord in other countries that were not so fortunate as to
have a Dr. Martin Luther King, we realize what horrors we were spared, and
how blessed we were by his life.
Our progress has been slow, even fitful at times, even painful at
times, and it came even at the cost of lives, including Dr. King's own, but
the progress has been overwhelmingly peaceful, and by and large steady.
In the brief time that I have to serve as Attorney General, I intend to
do what I can to continue, and to speed, this progress. In my first month
on the job, I hosted a group of our nation's civil rights leaders,
including Ted Shaw, whose career is itself a continuation on the path
marked by Dr. King. I pledged to them, as I do now to you, that the
vigorous, fair, and impartial enforcement of the civil rights laws is among
my top priorities as Attorney General.
There will, of course, be moments of disagreement, as there have been.
But I hope and assume that those disagreements will be rare. And it is
important to recognize that any such disagreements are about means, not
ends. Like Dr. King, we all share the goal of equal rights and freedom for
all -- of fulfilling what Dr. King called America's "sacred obligation" and
securing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as he put it, for all
"God's children."
A little more than two months ago, when I took the oath as Attorney
General, I declared that what the Department of Justice does is law. That
may sound prosaic or limited, or ordinary, but it is better than the
alternative, where the results depend on the opinion of one person or group
of people as to what they feel is right. We don't do simply what seems fair
and right according to our own tastes, standards, or political opinions. In
each case, however large or small, we do what the facts and the law
require, and the result is justice.
That is true for all of what the Department of Justice does -- but
especially true in the area of civil rights. Civil rights is not, and must
not become, an issue of black or white; Muslim or Christian; Republican or
Democrat. The enforcement of the civil rights laws is, as Dr. King made
plain, a universal moral command, a choice between justice and injustice.
In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Dr. King spoke of what he
called "an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of
mankind." I share that faith. Not only because of the tremendous progress
that our nation has made since Dr. King's day, when many Americans toiled
under what he described accurately and eloquently "the manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination." But also because there are
too many good people like those who serve in the Justice Department's Civil
Rights Division, and those like Reverend Smith and the volunteers behind
the Shiloh Male Youth Enhancement Project.
But Dr. King's legacy mandates more than just faith; it requires
vigilance and action in the face of injustice. As Coretta Scott King
reminded us, as she put it, "we were not put here in this greatest of
nations to dream small dreams and perform insignificant deeds." I have
committed myself to such vigilance and such action, and I ask for your
partnership and your support in doing so. I think we owe nothing less to
Dr. and Mrs. King.
And I thank you very much.
SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice
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