John F. Kennedy photo

Remarks Recorded for the Opening of a USIA Transmitter at Greenville, North Carolina.

February 08, 1963

IT GIVES ME great pleasure to open this dedication of a new transmitter complex of the United States Information Agency. Today is a beginning. More peoples in many new lands will now hear the sound of the voice of this country, the Voice of America.

The radio arm of the USIA helps to tell America's story abroad. The Voice of America is young in years, but it is experienced in deeds. These powerful new transmitters at Greenville symbolize an advance into a new dimension of responsibility.

The years ahead hold the promise of our telling America's story to people unable to hear it now. Today the voice is strong where once it was weak. Today the Voice of America can better reach those whose masters seek to drown it out with jamming and interference. It is the truth of ideas that this new facility will communicate to an eager world.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death. In this dawn of the space age, Telstar and Relay share the future with these transmitters. Telstar and Relay cannot broadcast directly into a home, but these short-wave transmitters do.

Both they and the satellites will tomorrow help tell our story to the world. To the United States Information Agency I say congratulations on the new Greenville facility. Your burden in the years ahead is one of truth and challenge. I am confident it will be well discharged and free men everywhere will listen to the sound of your words of truth that seek out men and women of the world that wish to listen to the voice of freedom, to the Voice of America.

Note: The President's remarks were recorded for broadcast later in the morning as part of the ceremony at Greenville.

John F. Kennedy, Remarks Recorded for the Opening of a USIA Transmitter at Greenville, North Carolina. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236927

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