US Presidency
1995

That's largely because of my family. My grandfather had a grade school education and ran a grocery store across the street from the cemetery in Hope, Arkansas, where my parents and my grandparents are buried. Most of his customers were black, were poor, and were working people. As a child in that store, I saw that people of different races could treat each other with respect and dignity. But I also saw that the black neighborhood across the street was the only one in town where the streets weren't paved. And when I returned to that neighborhood in the late sixties to see a woman who had cared for me as a toddler, the streets still weren't paved. A lot of you know that I am an ardent movie-goer. As a child, I never went to a movie where I could sit next to a black American. They were always sitting upstairs. In the 1960 's, believe it or not, there were still a few courthouse squares in my State where the restrooms were marked white and colored.