The important thing is to end a conflict that has brought burdens to both our peoples, and above all to the people of South Viet-Nam. If you have any… - Lyndon B. Johnson

Lincoln freed the slaves of their chains 100 years ago. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation 100 years ago this year, and he freed them of their chains, but he didn't free them of their color and the bigotry that goes against color in this country. Until education is unaware of race, until employment is blind to color, emancipation will be a proclamation, but it will not be a fact, and we have got to pass a medical care bill for the aged, and we are within one vote of doing it.

In the month of May of this year employment rose to an all-time high in the United States of more than 71 million jobs. The unemployment rate yesterday dropped to 5.1 percent. For married men the unemployment rate dropped to 2.6 percent--the lowest unemployment rate for married men in the last 6 years. What does this mean? This means that 97.4 percent of all married workers in this country now have jobs. In the last 12 months alone in this country we have added 2 million jobs to the American economy. We have lowered unemployment, even though 1.4 million people have entered the labor market in the past 5 months, compared with a normal full-year increase of 1.2 million. Thus has promise become progress. For these achievements are not the easy product of chance or circumstance. They have resulted from the patient and the determined pursuit of policies, including the largest tax cut in the history of America designed to deter recession and generate growth. And we will continue this pursuit until every American who wants to work can find a job.

All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race. But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty. Of course, people cannot contribute to the Nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check. So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we are also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.