to President Clinton, President Carter, Vice President Biden, Jill, fellow Americans, five

decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made

at our founding.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed

by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness.

In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a

great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise, those truths remained unmet.

And so they came by the thousands, from every corner of our country -- men and women, young

and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom

for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. Across the land, congregations

sent them off with food and with prayer. In the middle of the night, entire blocks of

Harlem came out to wish them well.

With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses,

even if they couldn't always sit where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked,

or walked. They were seamstresses, and steelworkers, and students, and teachers, maids and pullman

porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors.

And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation's capital, under the shadow

of the great emancipator, to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government

for redress and to awaken America's long-slumbering conscience.

We rightly and best remember Dr. King's soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice

to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors

alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.

But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names

never appeared in the history books, never got on TV.

Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters, had lived in

towns where they couldn't vote, in cities where their votes didn't matter. There were

couples in love who couldn't marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found

denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten and children fire- hosed. And

they had every reason to lash out in anger or resign themselves to a bitter fate.

And yet they chose a different path. In the face of hatred, they prayed for their tormentors.

In the face of violence, they stood up and sat in with the moral force of nonviolence.

Willingly, they went to jail to protest unjust laws, their cells swelling with the sound

of freedom songs. A lifetime of indignities had taught them that no man can take away

the dignity and grace that God grants us. They had learned through hard experience what

Frederick Douglas once taught: that freedom is not given; it must be won through struggle

and discipline, persistence and faith.

That was the spirit they brought here that day.

That was the spirit young people like John Lewis brought that day. That was the spirit

that they carried with them like a torch back to their cities and their neighborhoods, that

steady flame of conscience and courage that would sustain them through the campaigns to

come, through boycotts and voter registration drives and smaller marches, far from the spotlight,

through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham, the carnage of Edmund Pettus Bridge and the

agony of Dallas, California, Memphis. Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt,

that flame of justice flickered and never died.

And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, the civil rights law

was passed. Because they marched, the voting rights law was signed. Because they marched,

doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally

imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else's laundry or shining somebody

else's shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures

changed and Congress changed and, yes, eventually the White House changed. (Cheers, applause.)

Because they marched, America became more free and more fair, not just for African-Americans

but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims,

for gays, for Americans with disabilities.

America changed for you and for me.

And the entire world drew strength from that example, whether it be young people who watched

from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the

young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid. (Applause.)

Those are the victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is the

transformation that they wrought with each step of their well-worn shoes. That's the

depth that I and millions of Americans owe those maids, those laborers, those porters,

those secretaries -- folks who could have run a company, maybe, if they had ever had

a chance; those white students who put themselves in harm's way even though they didn't have

to -- (applause) -- those Japanese- Americans who recalled their own interment, those Jewish

Americans who had survived the Holocaust, people who could have given up and given in

but kept on keeping on, knowing that weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in

the morning -- (cheers, applause) -- on the battlefield of justice, men and women without

rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all, in ways that our children now take

for granted as people of all colors and creeds live together and learn together and walk

together, and fight alongside one another and love one another, and judge one another

by the content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth.

To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little

has changed -- that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price

to march in those years. (Applause.) Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael

Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr., they did not die in vain. (Applause.) Their victory

was great.

But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is

somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend

on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not

complacency. Whether it's by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuring

that the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal justice system and not

simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails -- (applause) -- it requires

vigilance.

(Cheers, applause.)

And we'll suffer the occasional setback. But we will win these fights. This country has

changed too much. (Applause.) People of good will, regardless of party, are too plentiful

for those with ill will to change history's currents. (Applause.)

In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of

legalized discrimination -- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second

goal of the march, for the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search

of some abstract idea. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice -- (applause) -- not

just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. For what does it

profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can't afford

the meal?

This idea that -- that one's liberty is linked to one's livelihood, that the pursuit of happiness

requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material

security -- this idea was not new.

Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms, as a promise

that in due time, the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all

should have an equal chance.

Dr. King explained that the goals of African-Americans were identical to working people of all races:

decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare

measures -- conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and

respect in the community.

What King was describing has been the dream of every American. It's what's lured for centuries

new arrivals to our shores. And it's along this second dimension of economic opportunity,

the chance through honest toil to advance one's station in life, that the goals of 50

years ago have fallen most short.

Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable

a half-century ago. But as has already been noted, black unemployment has remained almost

twice as high as white employment (sic), Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth

between races has not lessened, it's grown.

As President Clinton indicated, the position of all working Americans, regardless of color,

has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.

For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate.

Even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes, inequality

has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities

across this country in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts

a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects,

inadequate health care and perennial violence.

And so as we mark this anniversary, we must remind ourselves that the measure of progress

for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely how many blacks had joined the ranks

of millionaires; it was whether this country would admit all people who were willing to

work hard, regardless of race, into the ranks of a middle-class life. (Applause.) The test

was not and never has been whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for

a few. It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many, for the

black custodian and the white steelworker, the immigrant dishwasher and the Native American

veteran. To win that battle, to answer that call -- this remains our great unfinished

business.

We shouldn't fool ourselves. The task will not be easy. Since 1963 the economy's changed.

The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided

a foothold into the middle class, reduced the bargaining power of American workers.

And our politics has suffered. Entrenched interests -- those who benefit from an unjust

status quo resisted any government efforts to give working families a fair deal, marshaling

an army of lobbyists and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger

labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund crumbling schools -- that

all these things violated sound economic principles.

We'd be told that growing inequality was the price for a growing economy, a measure of

the free market -- that greed was good and compassion ineffective, and those without

jobs or health care had only themselves to blame.

And then there were those elected officials who found it useful to practice the old politics

of division, doing their best to convince middle-class Americans of a great untruth,

that government was somehow itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity -- that

distant bureaucrats were taking their hard-earned dollars to benefit the welfare cheat or the

illegal immigrant.

And then, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the course of 50 years,

there were times when some of us, claiming to push for change, lost our way. The anguish

of assassinations set off self-defeating riots.

Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse- making for criminal behavior.

Racial politics could cut both ways as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood

was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality

of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed

as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation,

as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason

to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled. That's how hope was

diverted. It's how our country remained divided.

But the good news is, just as was true in 1963, we now have a choice. We can continue

down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our

children accept a life of lower expectations, where politics is a zero-sum game, where a

few do very well while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic

pie. That's one path. Or we can have the courage to change.

The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history,

that we are masters of our fate.

But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work

together. We'll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition

of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago.

And I believe that spirit is there, that true force inside each of us. I see it when a white

mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child. I see it when

the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white

man. It's there when the native born recognizing that striving spirit of a new immigrant, when

the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who were discriminated against

and understands it as their own. That's where courage comes from, when we turn not from

each other or on each other but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone.

That's where courage comes from. (Applause.)

And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage,

we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every

person. (Applause.) With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every

child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that

stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them.

(Applause.) With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform