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[[caption]]Vernon Jordan (left) & Benjamin L. Hooks (right) with Lena Horne, Spingarn medalist [[/caption]]

Excerpts From...
What Presidential Candidates Told NAACP Convention Delegates

Walter F. Mondale (Former U.S. Vice President)

“All of my public life I’ve been close to the NAACP. I think I know why. There are two reasons. First, I was brought into politics by one of the finest human beings in the history of our country, Hubert Humphrey. Secondly, Minnesota produced, we claim, Roy Wilkins and my old friend, Clarence Mitchell, who is with us here this afternoon.

“A few weeks ago at a news conference, somebody got up and said, ‘Mr. President, how do you hope to get the votes of minority Americans after what you’ve done to them?’ He said, ‘I have been a superb President in this area.’ He said, ‘It’s a perception problem.’ And it is. He can’t see you at all. And you see right through him.

"He's opposed every arms control agreement in 25 years and would have us believe he's the best arms controller in history.

"Just the other night in his news conference, he was asked if he was a rich man's President. He said, 'No, I'm doing things that I think are fair to all the people.' I'll tell you what that reminds me of — Will Rogers once said of Hoover, 'It's not what he doesn't know that bothers me, it's all those things he knows for sure that just ain't so.'

"Mr. Reagan, we don't want cheese, we want jobs. We don't want powdered milk, we want economic power. In short, we want our country back.

"In 1984, we're going to take it back. We're going to stand up and be counted in 1984.

"I want to be the President who puts America back to work with jobs and justice.
"I want to be the President who opens up business and entrepreneurship and profits across the board to black and minority Americans with the enforcement of laws, the efforts of the Small Business Administration, and the help of leadership like Clarence Mitchell.

"I want to be the President who leads the fight to give our young people some hope in this country again. What's happening to these youngsters is a disgrace. Standing on the street corners, wanting to believe, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and in every second of it doubting themselves and their future. That is no way to treat Americans. That's no way to build our future. These children have to feel good about themselves, and they have to have a chance for jobs, for learning and a future like everyone else. And I want to be the President who does that for the young people of our country.

"We need an America where jobs are growing here in the United States. I want, when I'm President of the United States, to be able to go to a store, pick up a product, turn it over and read on the label, "Made in the United States of America."

"Under this Administration we're having the worst trade year in American history, $70 billion of imports over exports, and it has cost millions of Americans their jobs.

"This is the country that rebuilt Western Europe. We're the country that rebuilt Japan. And I say the time has come to rebuild the United States of America.

"I want to be the President who

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