Remarks in Texarkana at the Dedication of John F. Kennedy Square

Mr. Russell, Governor and Mrs. Faubus, Governor Connally, Senator Yarborough, Congressman and Mrs. Patman, Congressman and Mrs. Harris, distinguished platform guests, ladies and gentlemen:

First, I want to express my deep regret to all of you and to each of you for our tardiness this evening. It was good of you to want us to come. It was even better of you to be so patient and understanding.

We left Washington early this morning, about 4:30 or 5 o'clock your time, and we have been to El Paso, Eufaula Dam, in Oklahoma, Muskogee, Oklahoma City, and everywhere we have gone we have been meeting and visiting with and talking with, and seeing, good people just like you. So because of the crowds and because of our desire to say hello to each of them, we were delayed tonight. I hope that you are good enough to understand that there wasn't much we could do about it.

We do appreciate your coming here and welcoming us back to our home State. We do appreciate the presence of the two great Governors of Arkansas and Texas, and how they honor us on this platform. We are very pleased that we could have with us our own senior Senator from the State of Texas, Ralph Yarborough; our own Congressman, Jack Brooks.

You know, we in Texas are very proud of our delegation. We have been proud of it for many years in the Congress. When Mr. Garner was Vice President many years ago, and Mr. Rayburn was the Majority Leader getting ready for the Speakership, someone asked him why Texas had such a fine delegation in the Congress. Mr. Rayburn replied, "We pick 'em young, we pick 'em honest, we send them there and we keep them there."

And the reason that Texas and Arkansas both have such a fine delegation in the Congress today is because you pick 'em young, and you pick 'em honest, and you send 'em there and you keep them there.

I think I should say to you people in Texarkana, you are a very fortunate lot. For many years you have had two of the ablest Congressmen in the House of Representatives. You know, there was a time in Texas history when we said we give you two governors for the price of one. Well, in Texarkana you have two Congressmen for the price of one--our own beloved Wright Patman and our own beloved Oren Harris.

Now Texans will understand this because we are quite a modest lot, but while I have a chance to say something to Arkansas, I want to say this: There is no delegation in the United States Congress that has contributed more to the success of that Congress, that has contributed more sound, constructive leadership to the entire Nation, than the great State of Arkansas. There are States in the Union that you can't match in number of tillable acres. There are States in the Union that you can't match in terms of per capita wealth. There are States in the Union that you cannot match in population. But I will tell you, the Arkansas delegation is a match for any delegation in either House of the Congress.

John McClellan and Bill Fulbright wear proudly the title of Senator from the great State of Arkansas in the greatest deliberative body in the world. Wilbur Mills, Jim Trimble, Oren Harris, and "Took" Gathings, the other members of the Arkansas delegation in the Congress, are always there and on the job, and all of them have reached positions of seniority where they exercise great influence. I have never seen a single one of them when you called upon them but what they knew what they were talking about and they had only one criterion, only one yardstick they applied, and that was this: If this is good for America, it is good for Arkansas and it is good for us.

I say to you tonight that the Arkansas delegation in the Congress has made great contributions to the welfare of all of our people. And I honor them and I salute them.

We have come here, though, to commemorate the great life of a great man--John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Ten thousand words would not honor the one thousand days that he served us all. Ten times ten thousand words would not express the sorrow in the hearts of each of us tonight. But John Kennedy would be impatient if we spent even one hundred words eulogizing him or sorrowing over him.

He would want us to honor him as he always honored us: by thinking of tomorrow. By talking of what we must do together to make tomorrow better and brighter and more secure for all men in our land and for all people around the world.

On that September day 4 years ago when John Fitzgerald Kennedy came here to Texarkana and spoke to you, he had this to say:

"Lyndon Johnson and I seek to represent the United States in a very difficult and a very dangerous period. We do not run for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency promising that if we are elected life will be easier.

"But we do promise you that if we are elected this country will begin to move again. This country will move forward. This country will stand strong. This country's brightest days will be ahead."

Tonight you know, and all the world knows, that America is moving forward, America does stand strong, the brightest days that we have ever known are opening before us. And they are opening in every section of the land. I am so proud that we have leadership that is opening those doors to our own beloved section.

But I would not want to mislead you. This is still a dangerous and a difficult time. This generation of Americans wants no promise of a life of ease, for we seek to live the life of the free.

Our concern tonight is for courage enough to win the contest of our times, for we know this: What we have we cannot keep, what we hope to have we cannot reach, unless we hold to our sure and our steadfast course of strength.

America's strength has never been the strength of arms alone. America's missiles are mighty. But the true strength of America lies in the moral might of our cause. It lives in the righteousness of the hearts of the people.

The sons of America are welcome tonight in free lands around the world because all men know that their purpose is peace. And the day must never come when our words or our deeds cause that purpose to be doubted.

Who leads America must speak what is deep in the hearts of Americans, not what comes from the top of the head. And deep in the heart of all America is a love for peace. We so devoutly want peace in the world. We want peace in the lives of all of our people. We want our senior citizens and our young folks, our family farmers and our businessmen, our workingmen and our management people, to live without fear of the future.

In your lifetime and mine, great gains have been made in this land, the greatest gains ever made in any land at any time. And there is no time for us tonight to give those gains away or to allow them to be taken from us. But those gains will go, and they will be taken from us, if ever we allow any people to divide us. Because the ultimate test of moral fitness for men who seek a public trust is their devotion to perfection of our system and their devotion to justice in our society.

All that we are, all that we ever hope to be, is placed in mortal jeopardy by those who would divide us, by those who would set class against class, and creed against creed, and religion against religion, and color against color, and section against section.

Let me remind each of you tonight that here in Texarkana I stand astride the boundary line between the two great States. Only a few miles out yonder and a few miles behind me two other great States join these two. Almost anywhere else in the world these lines would be marked by fences, or barriers, or walls--but not here in America.

As it is among Americans, so it is between us and our neighbors.

Only last week I stood on our border with the Prime Minister of Canada, far away from here. Only today, at noon, I stood on our border with the President of Mexico. On neither border are there fortifications or barbed wire fences or fears. And this is the way that Americans want to live--in the world and at home. And this is another reason why we must guard against those who would erect around our regions or our States prejudice and the barriers of hate or misunderstanding.

My beloved friends, as I stand here before you tonight, looking into your faces and into your eyes, I face to the south. I speak words which were spoken long before when I say, "Abandon all these local animosities and make your sons American." Those are the words of a great son of the South. Those are the words of Robert E. Lee, and they are words by which all of us may wisely live today.

Sixty miles from here my wife was born. In this part of Texas she lived as a young girl and she learned as a young woman. This earth of Texas is part of her, and I am proud to say it is part of me. She has come back home tonight to the soil and to the people that she loves.

One's heart never really leaves home. Although thousands of miles may intrude, and you may walk with kings, queens, prime ministers, and fair ladies, there is forever a part of your birthplace that is bright and that is alive, and that gives you pride.

So tonight I speak to you with a heart full of hope and with a heart full of promise.

But there are voices abroad in the land that have a strange and a brittle tone. They cry out that we are weak, and America is soft and blind. They insist the way to the future is the road back into the past. They demand suspicion as the price of liberty, and belligerence as the alternate for peace. They just can't seem to find anything right with our beloved country and our beloved people. And all they find about us is wrong.

But thank God truth is eternal. Malice may distort it, and ignorance may ignore it, and panic may deride it, but the truth is always there. Truth is the weapon of the people, and truth is their shield against dishonor. Truth will protect them from false prophets and truth will save them from cruel hopes.

The truth is simple and the truth is this: Our beloved Nation was never stronger than it is this hour tonight. And our Nation was never more prosperous than it is this hour tonight. You and all of you know that in your heart I am right, because I know where we have been, so it is easy to measure how far we have come.

Tonight social security is the haven for our elderly citizens, and minimum wages have brought a better life to millions of our little people. The TVA and the REA have banished darkness from the countryside, and some of the voices say that this is all wrong. But the truth says that it is right.

Tonight our free enterprise system was never healthier. Wages were never larger. Profits were never higher, and job opportunities were never brighter, because more than 72 million have jobs tonight. Some of the voices deny this. But you know in your heart that it is right.

Today we have opened the doors to more education for more people. We have widened the horizons of better conservation of all of our natural resources. This afternoon I saw dozens of miles of long lakes where mothers and fathers will take their children for weekends. I saw dams that will save the farmers downstream from floods. I saw homes that will have electricity because of the energy that is created. Yes, the voices say this conservation is wrong. But you know, and I know, in our hearts that it is right.

Tonight we ask for equality under our Constitution and under our Bill of Rights. We ask for equality and justice and fair treatment for all of our citizens under our Constitution, and because of this, some of us are smeared and some of us are told that we should be fearful. But the truth says that it is right.

Today we enjoy more freedom than any American ever enjoyed at any time in our history, and what is important, we have more time to enjoy it because we are working fewer hours per day, fewer days per week, fewer weeks per year. The voices deny this. But the truth says that it is right.

Tonight we have a test ban treaty that keeps the air that we breathe--keeps it clean and free of poison. Some of the voices say that this is a mistake, that this is wrong. But the mothers of America say this is right, and you know in your own heart that this is right.

Tonight we strive for peace, peace in the world through armed strength and through human understanding, through the United Nations and through God's own rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. The voices say this is wrong. But the truth says this is right.

So my fellow countrymen, I have faith in the truth. The truth made us free. And the truth shall keep us free.

Sometimes in the late of night, when all the Capital City has gone to sleep, I sit by myself behind that big black fence and I read and I think. And oftentimes it is so quiet in the White House that I can almost hear the footsteps of the men who have lived in that house, and the men who have walked its halls and have slept in its rooms, and have stayed awake waiting for the sun to come up--Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

And when the problems and the decisions that are part of every President's life weigh heavily upon me, and my shoulders bend because it just seems that you can't carry any more, I always try to remember that this land was born in struggle and has survived and endured in freedom because truth prevailed and because decency ultimately triumphed.

I also remember that the men who lived in this house before me kept one cause and one aim in their hearts: What is right and what is best for the American people.

Well, here on the platform with my beloved friends Oren Harris and Wright Patman, with my great, able, senior Senator Ralph Yarborough, and with the two distinguished Governors, the chief executives of our States, Orval Faubus and John Connally, I want to say to all of you, with God as my witness, that this is my aim, and this is my purpose: What is right and best for the American people is best for all of US.

And with your help and with God's guidance, with the strength that comes from your prayers, Lady Bird and I will go back and open the gate and get behind the black iron fence on Monday. We pledge to you for as long as we are privileged to be there that we shall do what is right and what is best for all the people of this land.