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-4~ It should be our goal to make it possible for any child who wishes to | do so to enter the same public schools on the same basis as ) they are made available to children of another race. \. We met contime achieving equal job opportunities for all our people. We must do this because we have proved to ourselves and to the wrld that 4t is the quality of the man, and not the color of his skin, which determines ‘who can serve on our courts; who can hold high public office; who can exer- -ogise great responsibilities in office; who can produce miracles of science or our educational institutions. This has now been shown by example after example, until examples are no longer necessary. . And finally, we mst move ahead throughout the country in achieving, | for all our citizens, access to public places and the freedom to live where they choose. ; President Kennedy said in his message last month: "No act is more cone trary to the spirit of our democracy and Constitution than the barring of (any Negro) citizen from restaurants, hotels, theaters, recreational areas and other public accommedations and facilities." In the past three years alone, many states by law and many cities by voluntary act have ended a century of such discrimination. And last year, as a result of federal action, virtually every bus station, every railroad station, and every airport in the South was desegregated. It is now pos- sible to travel from Seattle to Key West and not see eigns “whites only” or “colored only. . . Many states and cities as well as the federal government shrougt execu- tive order last fall also have moved to open communities to Negro residents. By the end of this decade we will have gone much, much further down this road. t We are, in short, turning a corner--in a period of great and intense j Change. Once ‘again . the nark of this change i is seen with clarity here in Kentucky. Oniy today, Governor Combs has issued a Code of Fair Practice, following the establishment of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights and the Louisville Human Relations Commission. This is a wise and long step for the State of Kentucky. It is also a reflection of how far all the American people have gone in understanding the wisdom of the Emancipation itself, and the dis- sents of Justice Harlan. In the last analysis, the changes of this decade are not going to be those of the federal government or of the states or the cities. They will come, rather, as is right in a free society, from the people themselves-- from their hearts and their minds and consciences. The Kentucky Code of Fair Practice shows how the states can assert their responsibilities and thus preserve their rights. And my own experience in the Department of Justice over the past two yeare has convinced me beyond