of voter registration. as you say civil rights leaders did risk their lives to accompli accomplish. there s a broadway play right now chronicling that. and that s something coming up in remarks over and over again at the summit. we re awaiting second set of remarks from the director of the lbj library will be dipping in and out as news worthy things happen and take the president s remarks when those begin shortly. i do want to ask you again about lyndon b. johnson s legacy. fz not just civil rights, the current president, according to president clinton in his remarks, owe a lot in a range of issues to johnson, everything from voting rights to fair housing, there s medicaid. lyndon b. johnson s track record was diverse and listen to what he had to say about what president obama and he himself owed to lbj. we re here because the civil
[ applause ] and those children were on his mind when he strode to the podium that night in the house chamber, when he called for the vote on the civil rights law. and it never occurred to me, he said, in my fondest dreams that i might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students that he had taught so many years ago. and to help people like them all over this country. but now i do have that chance. and i ll let you in on a secret, i mean to use it. and i hope that you will use it with me. [ applause ] that was lbj s greatness and
been government programs that have fallen short. in a time when cynicism is too often passed off as wisdom, it s perhaps easy to conclude that there are limits to change. we are trapped by our own history. and politics is a full ser rand and if we roll back big chunks of lbj s legacy or don t put too much of our hope, invest too much of our hope in our government. i reject such thinking. not just because medicare [ applause ] not just because medicare and
medicaid lifted those from suffering and the poverty in this nation would be far worse without food stamps and head start and programs that survive to this day, i reject such cynicism because i have lived out the promise of lbj s efforts. because michelle has lived out the legacy of those efforts, because my daughters have lived out the legacy of those efforts and i and millions of those in my position had a position to take the baton that he handed to us [ applause ] because of the civil rights moment, because of the laws president johnson signed, new doors of opportunity swung up for everybody, not all at once but they swung open.
bloody sunday happened. the winds of change blew. and when the time came, when lbj stood in the oval office, i picture him standing there, taking up the entire door frame, looking out over the south lawn, and in a quiet moment and asked himself, what the true purpose of his office was for. what was the end point of his ambitions? he would reach back in his own memory and he would remember his own experience with want. then he knew had a unique capacity as the most powerful