Remarks to the Congregation of Shiloh Baptist Church - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 6, 2000

October 29, 2000

The President. Thank you. Good morning.

Audience members. Good morning.

The President. Reverend Smith, Mrs. Smith, honored guests, members of the church family. All I could think about for the first 30 minutes is how much I wished I were in the choir today. [Laughter]

I want to say how honored I am to be here, and to be here with so many members of the White House staff, including two ministers--some would argue we need more--Zina Pierre, who works in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Kevin Johnson, the Deputy Director of our Community Empowerment Board, under the Vice President. We also have a lot of other folks, as you know, who are here who wanted me to come here, I think, so they could be sure to show up. [Laughter]

I, too, want to thank Lorraine Miller, one of your members and one of my advisors, for all she did to make this possible, and all the others who have been mentioned. I want to thank this church for your outreach, to love not in word, but, indeed, in truth. I want to say a special word of appreciation to my friend, your delegate in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, for being here.

I've known Eleanor a long time, and we have worked closely together since I was trying to become President in 1992. We have shared high moments and low moments. We shared a disappointment last week when the Supreme Court said the people of DC shouldn't have full voting rights--I believe you should, and I always have.

But I think we can take a lot of pride, as your pastor just said, about the economic revitalization of the District of Columbia, and I am very honored that I could work with Eleanor to alleviate the extraordinary financial burdens on this city and have the National Government pay for the responsibilities that in any other circumstance would be done by a State government. And we took that off your shoulders; I think it will help.

I am proud of the DC College Access Act, which now has 3,000 of your young people going to college in other places for low in-State tuition. And I am still hoping we will succeed in passing our new markets program and some extra incentives for people to invest in the District of Columbia, to bring it all the way back.

So, I thank you, Eleanor. I thank you for the work that you've done to get Frederick Douglass' home established as a national memorial, and the preservation of the Carter G. Woodson home, which is near here, just up the street, I think.

This is a very kind of emotional day for me. I was thinking back--this is the first time in 26 years I haven't been on the ballot somewhere. [Laughter] And so I started kind of visiting around almost 27 years ago. And when you were singing and having your service, I was both here and my mind was wandering back over those 26 years. I thought of a time once when I was in an African-American service at night in the Mississippi Delta, in 1976, early. And it began to hail. And the building I was in was a tin-roof building. And it began to hail just as a lady got up to sing "If I Can Help Somebody"-- a cappella. She had perfect pitch, and she just kept on singing through the hail.

And I thought of so many other things that have happened over the years, because I have had the opportunity to be blessed in churches like this one--to come as a fellow believer and a child of God and a fellow sinner, to say, thank you. So, thank you. Thank you very much.

I don't know what ex-Presidents do exactly. I wonder if anybody will ever ask me back when I leave. He finally did--Reverend Smith did. [Laughter] One of my predecessors told me that he was lost for the first 4 months after he left office because when he walked in a room, nobody played a song anymore. [Laughter] He was never sure where he was. [Laughter] I am quite sure of where I am today. And I thank you.

I thank you for giving me the chance to serve these last 8 years, to give America a government that looks more like America; for working to create an economy that helps all Americans. I am very proud that we have achieved the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment ever recorded since we've been keeping these statistics, and that we have record homeownership and that we've tripled the number of small business loans to minorities. And we have the lowest crime rate in 27 years, and the African-American teen birth rate has dropped one-third since 1991--one-third.

We have 2 1/2 million children with health insurance who didn't have it; over 90 percent of our children immunized against serious childhood diseases for the first time in the whole history of the country. For the first time ever, African-American children are graduating from high school at the same rate as white students; the number of African-American children taking advanced placement tests up 500 percent over the last 6 years, 300 percent in the last 3 years alone.

And all over the country--this relates to something that's in the pastor's letter today, which I urge you to read. I'll say more about it in a minute, but all over the country one of the most hopeful things is that schools where children weren't learning are being turned into places where children are learning.