TOM PUTNAM: Any spare moments I've had over the last couple of weeks have been spent reading President Carter's White House Diary, which is filled with insights into his character and his Presidency, including more than a few surprises. Racial violence and racial hatred can have no place among us in the South or in the North. We are all Americans, we are all children of the same God.
But the question of legal rights is not yet settled. Today the problem of human rights in the United States is shifting from inequality of legal rights to inequality of opportunity. Later, that conviction became a passion for him, a passion that his brother Robert shared and, as his son has so well said, carried forward.Īs a southerner, as a Georgian, I saw at first hand how the moral leadership of the Kennedy administration helped to undo the wrongs that grew out of our nation's history. President Kennedy entered the White House convinced that racial and religious discrimination was morally indefensible. "And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future." He had a vision of how America could meet and master the forces of change that he saw around him. "Change is the law of life," he once said. President Kennedy took office understanding that the texture of social and economic life of our nation and our people was changing, and that our nation and our people would have to change with it. Let's watch an excerpt from his speech on that historic occasion: This Library will always have a special connection with President Jimmy Carter, as it was during his Presidency, in October 1979, that the Library was dedicated. And we will take written questions from the audience, so please submit them to our staff during the Forum. Signed copies of President Carter's new book are on sale in our bookstore.
I also want to thank our moderator, award-winning journalist Ray Suarez, senior correspondent for the NewsHour on PBS, and author of several books, including most recently The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America. Let me begin by acknowledging the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums, including lead sponsor Bank of America, Boston Capital, the Boston Foundation, the Lowell Institute, Raytheon, and our media partners, The Boston Globe, NECN and WBUR. And on behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you for coming.
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