I should like now to express my deep appreciation to the Commissioners, the Commission staff and the able scholars who assisted them in producing this document.

The distance still to be traveled one hundred years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation is at once a reproach and a challenge.

It must be our purpose to continue steady progress until the promise of equal rights for all has been fulfilled.

This report tells a great American story-it is the record of the deeds by which Negroes and their fellow Americans have given life and meaning to the words of Abraham Lincoln and the Founding Fathers before him.

In the interest of inter-American friendship and solidarity, I urge all United States citizens and interested organizations to contribute enthusiastically, by words and works, toward making Pan American Day and Pan American Week occasion…

I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Sunday, April 14, 1963 as Pan American Day, and the week from April 14 through April 20, 1963, as Pan American Week

I earnestly hope that the Congress will give early and favorable consideration to this proposed legislation.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

We cannot depend solely on our material wealth, on our military might, or on our intellectual skill or physical courage to see us safely through the seas that we must sail in the months and years to come.

We are all builders of the future...

There still is a body of Soviet military equipment and technicians which I think is of serious concern to this Government and the hemisphere.