WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- President George Bush received a kind reception and applause from the NAACP in his first address to the nation's oldest civil rights organization as president.
Bush previously had addressed the predominately African-American group as a candidate in the 2000 election but declined five invitations to speak at the organization's annual convention after he was elected.
"I see this as a moment of opportunity," he said. "I have come to celebrate the heroism of the civil rights movement."
The president said his family had a strong commitment to civil rights and vowed, to applause, to sign an extension of enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law when the Senate passes it.
Bush kept talking as a heckler was escorted from the Washington Convention Center near the end of his 35-minute speech. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and political adviser Karl Rove accompanied the president.
"For nearly 200 years our nation failed the test of extending the blessings of liberty to African Americans," he said. "Slavery was legal for nearly a hundred years, and discrimination legal in many places for nearly a hundred years more."
"I understand racism still lingers in America," Bush added, saying it was a tragedy many in the party of Abraham Lincoln had written off the black vote and many African-Americans had written off the Republican Party.
African slaves began arriving in the colonies in 1619.
