Left t right: Elliott S. Hall (Chairman, Board of Governors), Former President Bill Clinton, Michael Todman (President, Whirlpool International and National Dinner Chairman)

By Elliott Hall

When African American voters helped a young governor from Arkansas get elected President of the United States in 1992, there were hopes and dreams that the quality of life for people of color might improve. In the ensuing eight years, President Bill Clinton accomplished a rare feat: He far exceeded the expectations.

As a presidential candidate, Gov. Clinton said many of the right things. He campaigned in Black churches on Sundays, soulfully sang the words to the Negro National Anthem and deplored discrimination of any kind. He defined equality as giving every American, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, opportunities to succeed.

But what separates President Clinton from many predecessors is that he backed up his words with action, and deeds.

During the Clinton administration, home ownership, real wages, income and investment in cities and the Black community went up, while crime, teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births and the number of people on welfare went down -- in some cases, to record lows.

His economic policies moved many people out of poverty and into jobs where they could earn a decent, living wage. The government helped pay for childcare; and the Earned Income Tax Credit helped the working poor keep more of what they had earned. In public housings, residents had access to computers, job training programs and federal safeguards to keep landlords from taking advantage of them.

Clearly, President Clinton’s vision of American society included a bridge - “the Bridge to the 21st Century’’ as he called it – that paved a way for people of color and low-income citizens to improve their economic standing, while creating a better environment for their families. He initiated a national dialog on race, commissioning a blue-ribbon panel including John Hope Franklin - one of America’s most esteemed historians - to study the black-white racial divide in our society.

Furthermore, the Families and Medical Leave Act gave working families 12 weeks of unpaid leave to help them care for a sick family member, take care of a newborn or adopted child or recover from a serious illness themselves without losing their job. Minority families often have to call on family members for care-giving, and this new law helped tremendously by allowing them not to put their jobs at risk.

Even when championing controversial causes, such as welfare reform, President Clinton believed he was acting in the best interest of the people impacted. The long-term impact of welfare reform is still being debated, but it has helped millions of people move from welfare to work under the two-year deadline.

Often overlooked is the atmosphere that the White House set for the nation on race relations. Under President Clinton, corporations, housing developers and landlords knew that employment and housing discrimination laws would be strictly enforced. It had an impact on the nation; people were less likely to discriminate if they knew there was a chance that they could face prosecution. This tough attitude towards discrimination, as well as successful economic policies, helps explain why the unemployment rate for Blacks went from 14.2% when President Clinton took office to 7.3% when he left. And more Black people lived in or owned homes than ever before.

Communities of color are also safer. While data shows that murder is among the leading killers of African Americans, the overall homicide rates in major cities, like Boston and New York City, dropped for the first time in decades during the Clinton administration. By 2000, background checks required under the Brady anti-gun law helped federal agents stop an estimated 179,000 illegal gun purchases.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges today is continuing the progress at a time when a different President has different priorities. It is incumbent on Black academic, political and religious leaders to continue the momentum that was gained in the Clinton years.

President Clinton has not given up the fight. As the keynote speaker at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Policy’s Annual Dinner on April 11, President Clinton said one of his "great regrets" was failing to do more to bridge economic and social gaps between blacks a and whites. "The idea that I live in a country I spent my lifetime trying to make better, but there's still hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people, most of them people of color, who will die before their time, drop out of school, go to prison, never have a chance to live their dreams, is galling and painful to me."

Still, his polices have given people of color a foundation for the future.

Elliott Hall is Chairman of the Board of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, one of the nation’s leading African American think tanks.