President Biden Delivers Remarks at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Reception Transcript

Distinguished guests, the President of the United States, accompanied by Damon Hewitt.

All right, don’t you all look good? Good evening everyone.

Good Evening.

I want to start by extending my deepest gratitude to President Biden and his incredible staff for welcoming the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to the White House. I also want to thank all of you for joining us here tonight. Our board members, our incredible staff members, lawyers, advocates, strategists, our friends from the administration and from Congress. We also have several former Lawyers Committee executive directors here in the room tonight, including, I won’t say retired, but recently stepped down from the bench, Judge David Tatel. Thank you for joining us. All right, I got you. Yes.

(01:45)
And Vixen, the dog. In 1963, 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy issued a call for lawyers to convene at the White House. He implored them to use their skills as private attorneys general to bring the fight for civil rights from the streets and into the courtrooms in America. It was from that meeting that the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights was formed. For the past 60 years and counting, the Lawyers Committee network comprised of our nation’s most dedicated and talented attorneys both on our staff and throughout the private bar, have fought for civil rights, filed landmark cases, and won. Marshaling over 1 million pro bono hours from firms across the nation in the last decade alone.

(02:29)
We have been a force multiplier for justice and a powerful example of legal advocacy and a fight for civil rights. We’re honored to be able to call the Biden Administration a partner in justice. We have worked together to advance the cause of student debt relief, racial equity, police accountability, health equity, fair housing, and defending diversity and inclusion and more. The theme for this weekend’s March on Washington was not a commemoration but a continuation. I think that same theme applies to our work and our work together, Mr. President. I’m reminded that the times we’re in tell us that the work is more urgent than ever. Together we must continue to fight. We feel the same urgency that I know you feel, Mr. President.

(03:16)
That was felt by those lawyers and President Kennedy 60 years ago. It’s on all of us to continue the great march forward. We’re fortunate to have a president who understands that to his core, a president who is helping to lead the way. And now it is my honor to introduce to you the President of the United States, Joe Biden.

Mr. President, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please have a seat. Judge, what’s the dog’s name?

Dixon.

Dixon. Well, I tell you what, I got a German Shepherd upstairs. His name is Commander. They’ll get along well. They’ll get along well.

Sir, she’d love to meet him.

All right, we can work something out here maybe. President Hewitt. Thank you, man. Thank you for that introduction and for your leadership of one of America’s great civil rights organizations. Attorney General Garland, haven’t seen you in a long while, good to see you. Secretary of Homeland, you think I’m kidding? I’m not. Secretary of Homeland Security, a guy who took the job. Thank you for taking the job [inaudible 00:04:53]. Members of Congress. I am looking around. Where are the members? Any members of Congress here? Stand up if you are. They’re right in front of me, man. Members of the supporters of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under the Law, including the former president and current Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke. Kristen?

(05:26)
We are all too often reminded of what you do matters so very much and you are reminded of that on a regular basis. On Saturday morning, the nation observed the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. By the evening, a white gunman in Jacksonville, Florida reportedly driven by racial animus, went on a shootings rampage at a store near Edward Waters University, a historical Black university. Three Black Americans were murdered in cold blood. Racist violence today hearkens back to the church bombings and the cross burnings. In that same town five years earlier, there were another five young Blacks who were killed. While we gathered the facts and law enforcement has opened a federal civil rights investigation to treat this this terror as a possible hate crime, the act of domestic violence extremism.

(06:24)
It clearly is, but we know this as it made clear in my inaugural address. White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison. It’s been allowed to grow faster and fester in our communities. To the point where the US intelligence community determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland. The greatest threat. We have to act. We have to act. After the racist mass shootings in Buffalo last year, I got an opportunity to meet with every one of the family members. The Lawyers Committee and other leaders helped us host the United We Stand Summit here in the East Room in the White House.

(07:11)
We made clear that America is the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. All of us need to say clearly and as forcefully as we can that hate will not prevail in America. Hate will not prevail in America. Pause for just a moment. I thought things had changed. I was able to literally not figuratively talk to Strom Thurmond into voting for the Civil Rights Act before he died. And I thought, well, maybe there’s real progress, but hate never dies. It just hides. It hides under the rocks and when someone breathes little oxygen in it, it comes out with roaring out. And silence is complicity and we’re not going to remain silent.

(07:56)
You’re not, nor am I, nor are the vast majority of Americans. Denialism is worse and we’ll call it for what it is. While we know tragedy can’t be forever overcome or fully understood, there are certain things that we do know. With your help, I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years, but we must not stop until we ban assault weapons and high capacity magazine. We will do that once and we’ll do it again. We can’t fully prevent people from being radicalized to hate and violence, but we must address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize violent extremists and that’s going to be hard. It conflicts in many cases with the First Amendment. We’ve got a lot to do.

(08:52)
That’s why I issued the country’s first ever national strategy on countering domestic terrorism and I signed a landmark hate crime legislation that we’ve passed. And we have to continue to act though. Now is the time for all Americans to speak up when history is being erased, books are being banned. Do you ever think we’d have this conversation here at this time? Diversity is being attacked. As I said earlier, we’re one of the most diverse countries in the history of the world. Diversity is a strength of our nation, a cornerstone of our democracy. Now’s the time for all of us, especially all of you who make this your life’s work to protect that essential truth and that’s why we’re here today.

(09:36)
In June 1963, a defining time for America. On one single day, Vivian Malone and James Hood, two Black students arrived at the doors of the University of Alabama. Opened by the hope of Brown versus the Board of Education, but blocked by the organized hate of George Wallace. President Kennedy spoke to the nation from the Oval Office, warning of a moral crisis of bigotry facing the nation and announced a landmark civil rights bill. Late that night, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his home of Mississippi. Bernard Siegel, the Jewish lawyer in New York, published a statement signed by dozens of other lawyers, white and Black in the Alabama newspaper issuing a call to actions from attorneys around the country to fight this injustice.

(10:30)
By the end of June, more than 200 of you, 200 lawyers of different races from all across America were invited to the White House to strategize in this very room. That day in June 1963 in the east room of the White House, they established the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. His mission “to mobilize the nation’s leading lawyers as agents of change in the civil rights movement.” And that’s who you are and that’s what happened. Over time, the committee evolved from volunteers representing individual cases to full-time lawyers, leading broader high impact litigation, voting rights, employment, education, housing, and so much more. Today you understand civil rights as the unfinished fight of America and you’re leading the fight after having led the fight for the past 60 years.

(11:23)
You’ve been critical partners to this administration for helping us bring and protect the right to vote to chart new pathways to further equal opportunity in higher education, protecting the value of diversity and full inclusion of all Americans in the promise of America. That’s what it’s all about. To those who came before to all of you here today, to future lawyers who will heed the call to serve, I say thank you, thank you, thank you. Because the God’s truth is it wouldn’t have happen without you, as far as we’ve gotten. We need you badly. As the Lawyers Committee was being established, another kind of planning was going on in June of 1963. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Dorothy Height and other leaders of the movement were planning a long discussed march that would finally come to Washington.

(12:15)
The day after convening the Lawyers Committee, President Kennedy hosted the march organizers in the cabinet room expressing concern that any violence could derail the passage of the civil rights bill, but the march organizers were undeterred. They would not be slowed. Their crusade was about the law and the nation bearing witness of the power of the righteous cause. So on this day in August 1963, hundreds of thousands of Americans of every background descended on Washington DC from all of America. They made their way to the Lincoln Memorial where they heard from ministers, priests and rabbis.

(12:55)
They heard from heroes like Daisy Bates, the only woman to speak at the march who spoke about the power of women in the movement and she was way ahead of our time. By the way, there’s more women in my administration than men. That’s not an accident. And they heard from other patriots before hearing Dr. King preach about the dream that declared a new American anthem for jobs and freedom, political rights and economic justice. To redeem what he described as “the promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” A promise derived from the very ideal America. That we’re all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our entire lives.

(13:42)
While we never fully lived up to that promise, we’ve never thank God fully walked away from it because of the power, because people never stopped marching. We secured the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and so much more. Yet for all the progress, there is a backlash and heroes murdered, bombings of Black churches, including the 16th Baptist Church in Birmingham, where four little girls were murdered. A reminder that throughout our history, when the great nations have taken great steps forward, they often are met by the oldest, darkest and most vicious forces in the country rising up and dragging us down again.

(14:22)
That’s why earlier today I met with a group of our nation’s civil rights leaders, including President Hewitt. And that’s why we gather here in remembrance and in solidarity as we cannot keep marching forward unless we are determined to do so, and it starts with the administration that looks like America. That includes our Vice President Kamala Harris, who is co-chair of the San Francisco Lawyers Committee. And for our administration and with your help, it means pushing back against voter suppression, election subversion, and hate fuel violence. It means when police reform is blocked in Congress, we work together with a civil rights leader family and law enforcement enabling me to sign the most sweeping executive order on police reform ever as we keep pushing for Congress to act and we cannot give up until they pass the John Lewis legislation.

(15:22)
He made a commitment that I was going to nominate the first Black woman to be in the Supreme Court and with your help, we got it done. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. My daughter would say, “Everybody’s going to be surprised, she’s smarter than those guys.” She’s brilliant. In addition, we appointed more Black women in the federal courts, circuit courts, matter of fact, than every other president combined in American history. Many of you join me to bill signing from making it clear that interracial marriage and same-sex marriages are protected, period. Making Juneteenth a federal holiday to mark when the last enslaved people of America were finally freed.

(16:22)
Progress means a fundamental break with the trickle-down economics that promised prosperity for all but failed Americans, especially Black Americans for so many decades. Kamala and I came to office determined to change our economics, determined to change it in the ways that it has been over the last several decades. The direction of this country is to grow in our view from the middle out and the bottom up, not from the top down. That way everybody does well, the wealthy do very, very well, and everybody has a shot. We’re investing in all of American, the entire nation’s future. And I would argue our plan is working, but to those in America who are so consumed with the worst of our past with grievances and lies and hate and violence, that they’re in opposition to almost everything.

(17:13)
So we must be unyielding recognizing that the great cause of America, which is giving everyone an equal chance, just everyone an equal chance. My dad used to say, “Joey, your job is a lot more than the paycheck.” It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. He actually said this, it’s not a joke. It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, “Honey, it’s going to be okay,” and mean it. It’s a work of all of us to make sure we keep moving in that direction. We’re reminded of that truth on this day that marks another defining moment in our country’s history. 68 years ago today, Emmett Till was lynched and brutalized. He took his last breath at just 14 years of age for talking to a white woman.

(18:06)
In him, we remember too many other Black Americans, lynched, drowned, burned, castrated for trying to vote, for trying to go to school, for trying to own a business, for trying to preach the gospel, for just trying to live for God’s sake. We also remember the courage of people like Emmett Till’s mother. I find this profound all the years I’ve known of it, but profound. Emmett Till’s mother insisted the casket of her son’s mutilated body remained open so the world could see what was done to him. Imagine as a parent, imagine any circumstance, you having the courage to do that. Let the world see and if you’ve lost children, you understand what I’m talking about. It’s profound.

(18:57)
And she said, “Let the world see what I’ve seen.” That’s what she said. And American saw because she found purpose through her pain. I was able to sign the law, believe it or not, for the first time in American history. Think of this, for the first time, making lynching a federal hate crime in Emmett Till’s name. Took that long. A hundred years. 100 years. Well, last month surrounded by the Till family and friends once again, I signed a law establishing the Mamie and Emmett Till National Monuments in Illinois and in Mississippi, and I’m very proud to have done that. The story, how from trauma hope can grow and the promise of America prevail. That’s what it’s about. Let me close with this.

(19:50)
Among the lawyers who convened in this room 60 years ago was the son of a carpenter, a domestic worker in Alabama. His name was Fred Gray. When Dr. King, Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin and other giants in our history needed a lawyer in their fight for freedom, they called Fred. Fred was one of the most important civil rights lawyers in our history whose legal brilliance and strategy desegregated schools and secured the right to vote for millions of people up to that point who had been denied the right to vote. An ordinary minister, he pursued a righteous calling that brought him back here. I was going to say threw him back here, but it brought him back here.

(20:37)
It kind of threw him as well, back here to Washington in the same room 59 years later, and I had a great honor. I’ve read about him as a public defender and involved in civil rights myself as a kid’s lawyer, I always wondered what I got to bestow on Fred. 59 years later, the Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor. Remarkable man, I’ll also mention the youngest speaker at the March on Washington and future Congressman John Lewis, who became a friend. As Fred wrote after John’s death that they spoke and prayed that we “keep pushing, keep going, set the record straight.” That’s a defining moment of our time. This is our charge. Keep pushing, keep going, set the record straight.

(21:46)
I know we can. Just remember who in the hell we are. We are the United States of America, the United States of America. There’s not a single goal we’ve ever set that we’ve failed to accomplish when we did it together. Not a single solitary goal. It takes time, a lot of pain and a hell of a lot of work. But also think of all the people, all the individuals, all the children you’ve all given hope to. It’s not hyperbole. I’m being deadly earnest. Think about what you’ve done and what you continue to do. Let me conclude by saying this, that I think that we’re in an inflection point in history, not just in the United States, but in the world. Every [inaudible 00:22:34] from five to seven, eight generations, things change.

(22:37)
In fundamental ways, I had a physics professor used to say in inflection points, when you’re going down the highway at 60 miles an hour and all of a sudden you take a right turn, 7, 8, 10 degrees to the right. You can never get back in the path you’re on and you have a whole new outline, a whole new destination. You’re not sure where it is. You’ve got to adjust to it. Well, the way I look at it, and I know I’m referred to as a cockeyed optimist, but the way I look at it, you get pronounced overwhelming opportunities in foreign policy, domestic policy and civil rights, but you’re still the engineers.

(23:16)
You’re still the people that we are going to need to get it done. We have good people in the government now, but we’re going to make sure that we keep you together because there’s nothing beyond our capacity when we have you on our side. Every time I walk out of my grandfather Finnegan’s home up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he yelled, “Joey, keep the faith.” And my grandmother, “No Joey, spread it. Go spread the faith.”

Distinguished guests, please remain in your seats as the president departs.