King’s Dream Starts With Quality Schools, Bush Says

President-elect George W. Bush, in remarks commemorating the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said Monday that his new job will demand that he “listen not only to the successful, but also to the suffering.”

“I will remember the promise etched in this day,” he said as he paid a brief visit to an elementary school in a poor area of Houston.

For Bush, the visit to Kelso Elementary School offered more than an opportunity to honor the slain civil rights leader. It represented his first public opportunity since he won the disputed presidential election to seek to repair relations with the nation’s African Americans.

Bush offered his salute to King primarily in the context of education, which he again said will be the top priority of his presidency.

“We’re ready to bring a spirit of reform and results to public schools all across the country,” he said. “We’re going to urge more resources and flexibility to our schools and expect more in return so that no child is left behind.”

Focusing on improved schools as a key to mending America’s racial divide, Bush said, “The dream of equality is empty without excellent schools, schools that stress reading and discipline and character and decency. It is a goal we set.”

Like most recent GOP presidential candidates, Bush received little support from blacks in the election, gaining about only 9% of their votes. Allegations of widespread voting irregularities in heavily black precincts in Florida intensified hostility among blacks toward Bush.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House member, said Monday: “It would be hard to conceive of deeper anger than is already there.”

Norton, a Democrat, said one way for Bush to heal that rift upon taking office Saturday would be to push policies that address the concerns of minority communities.

Bush appeared at the Houston school with Rod Paige, the city’s school superintendent and his choice for secretary of Education. Paige, an African American, told the roughly 100 people attending the event that Bush’s presence “signals he understands the importance of this day to you, to me and to all of the nation.”

“It was nice of him to come to this community,” said Darlene Lange, who attended Kelso Elementary and whose daughter is in the fourth grade there now. However, “he needs to be a man of his word. He says he’ll be here for all people. That’s what he needs to focus on. I’m trying to make it in this world too, and most of the Republicans who’ve been in office haven’t helped the less fortunate.” Lange said she voted for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore.