Talking the Talk: Bill Clinton and School Desegregation‪.‬

Americans can be good at talking about race. The most-quoted words of the Declaration of Independence are not the declaration itself, but "all men are created equal." Abraham Lincoln's most famous legacy is not the war he commanded successfully, but the "Emancipation Proclamation" which ultimately justified it. Martin Luther King, Jr., led marches, boycotts, and protests which landed him in jail and ultimately cost him his life, but his "I Have a Dream" speech made him an American icon. Actions have been more difficult. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was not only the owner of many slaves, but the father of a few. The Emancipation Proclamation was purely symbolic, lacking the political backbone to free the slaves in the loyal border states. Dr. King's exhortation that Americans be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" laid the rhetorical foundation for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only to be manipulated by both sides of the "affirmative action" debate which followed.