For it is not enough just to give men rights. They must be able to use those rights in their personal pursuit of happiness. - Lyndon B. Johnson

I took the oath as the President only 12 or 13 days ago. Since my State of the Union Message on January 4 before my inauguration, I have sent to the Congress--will have, by the end of this week--16 messages--messages that are facing up to conflicts, messages that involve controversy, and don't doubt it, and messages that respond to the needs of this society. For what we have asked, we stand ready tonight to welcome all support and to confront all opposition. Believing that our requests are right, and that our cause is just, this administration is determined that the opportunity of this rare and most precious moment shall not be denied, defaulted, or destroyed. If some say our goals are idealistic, we welcome that as a compliment. For 188 years, the strongest fiber of America has been that thread of idealism which weaves through all our effort and all our aspiration. So let the world know--and let it be known throughout our own land--that this generation of Americans is not so cynical, and not so cool, not so callous that idealism is out of style. In a national house that is filled to overflowing, we are determined that the lives we lead shall not be vacant and shall not be empty. Your Government is concerned not with statistics but with the substance of your schools, and your jobs, and your cities, and your family life, and your countryside, your health, your hopes, your protection, your preparedness--and your rights and opportunities. For as Emerson once said: "The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities nor the crops, but the kind of man that the country turns out." So we are concerned tonight with the kind of man that the country turns out in these times and the times that are to come.

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause. At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.

You have helped to fight many battles on many fronts. I remember one that you fought and just to show you how much progress has been made, when I came here I was one of the few Congressmen the first year I was in Washington from my section of the country--only three of us from the South signed a petition to call a caucus to discharge a committee on the wage and hour bill. The other two, Maury Maverick and W. D. MacFarlane, both got defeated at the next election on account of their signing that petition. They were revolutionists and they were rebels and they kicked over the dinner pail and they caused a lot of trouble. And we actually, though finally with President Franklin Roosevelt's great support and by a fireside chat, we passed that bill that gave working people a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour. That was in 1938.