Statement by the President on the Anniversary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln.

ON THIS DAY each year, we pause to honor the memory and the wisdom of a great American. It is especially appropriate that we do so on this occasion, for in the past year America has made unprecedented progress in fulfilling the ideal for which Abraham Lincoln stands.

Six months ago, I signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Since that time, Federal examiners in 37 counties in 5 Southern States have enrolled 100,000 formerly disenfranchised Negro citizens.

Even more encouraging, however, is the widespread, voluntary compliance by local voting officials, who have registered nearly 200,000 Negro citizens in those same Southern States in the same period of time.

The Nation can be assured and encouraged by this progress. But these same figures also illustrate not only how far we have come but also how far we have to go.

More than half the adult Negroes of the South are still not 'participating in this most basic right of citizenship, the right to vote. Until every American, whatever his color or wherever his home, enjoys and uses his franchise, the work which Lincoln began will remain unfinished.

For, as Abraham Lincoln himself declared: "Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government."

That ideal must be--and can be--and will be fulfilled in our time.