US Presidency
1995

I graduated from a segregated high school 7 years after President Eisenhower integrated Little Rock Central High School. And when President Kennedy barely carried my home State in 1960, the poll tax system was still alive and well there. Even though my grandparents were in a minority, being poor Southern whites who were pro-civil rights, I think most other people knew better than to think the way they did. And those who were smart enough to act differently discovered a lesson that we ought to remember today: Discrimination is not just morally wrong, it hurts everybody. In 1960, Atlanta, Georgia, in reaction to all the things that were going on all across the South, adopted the motto, the city too busy to hate. And however imperfectly over the years, they tried to live by it. I am convinced that Atlanta's success, it now is home to more foreign corporations than any other American city, and one year from today it will begin to host the Olympics, that that success all began when people got too busy to hate.