Remarks to the National Urban League Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: July 28, 2003

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 4, 2003

We're also helping Africa overcome one of the deadliest enemies it has ever faced, the spread of HIV/AIDS. Over the next 5 years, the United States has pledged $15 billion to fight AIDS around the world, with special focus on nations in Africa and the Caribbean. We ate working with governments and private groups and faith-based organizations to help with prevention and to provide much needed antiretroviral drugs for treatment. We are determined to turn the tide against AIDS in Africa.

Recently, on my trip to Africa, I visited Goree Island in Senegal, where for centuries men and women were delivered and sorted and branded and shipped. It's a haunting place, a reminder of mankind's capacity for cruelty and injustice.

Yet Goree Island is also a reminder of the strength of the human spirit and the capacity for good to overcome evil. The men and women who boarded slave ships on that island and wound up in America endured the separation of their families, the brutality of their oppressors, and the indifference of laws that regarded them only as articles of commerce. Still, the spirit of Africans in America did not break. All the generations of oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom. And by a plan only known to providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awake the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.

The moral vision of African Americans and of groups like the Urban League caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race.

Our journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over. Yet I am confident that we will reach our destination. We have been called to great work in our time, and we will answer that call. We will defend our freedom, and we will lead the world toward peace. And we will unite America behind the great goals of opportunity for all and for compassion for those in need.

I want to thank each of you for serving this cause in your own lives. May God bless your work, may God bless the Urban League, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

NOTE: The President spoke at 11:17 a.m. at the David Lawrence Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., founder and president, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; and Mayor James A. Garner of Hempstead, NY.