There is no room for injustice anywhere in the American mansion. But there is always room for understanding toward those who see the old ways crumbli… - Lyndon B. Johnson

In this same month ninety-five years ago-on March 30, 1870 — the Constitution of the United States was amended for the fifteenth time to guarantee that no citizen of our land should be denied the right to vote because of race or color. The command of the Fifteenth Amendment is unequivocal and its equal force upon State Governments and the Federal Government is unarguable. Section 1 of this Amendment provides: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world. Since Christmas your government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam. Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace. In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear. We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear. The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification. This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard. We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or 14 or 40—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future. We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response. So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.

I have said this to a good many of you before in our other conferences, but I think it is worth repeating. I believe if we prevail in this world and if we survive, it will be primarily due to the efficiency and the strength of our system of government. I think our system of government is better than the system of our adversaries. And I think in time we will demonstrate it and it will prevail. I think that we can do a job better and more efficient and more satisfactory for the capitalist who sends his dollar out hoping to get a small return on it, the manager who gets up at daylight and works until midnight to put that dollar and the men together and develops stomach ulcers in the process but looks forward to the bonus that he may get from the board of directors at the end of the year, to the worker who tries to produce a better mousetrap at lower costs. And when all these three are put together, I believe that they can do a better job than any slaves can do for any commissars. And I have faith that that system will prevail.