The President made these remarks during a White House ceremony where he established a national monument to Emmet Till, a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. Speaking to a predominantly Black audience, President Biden emphasized the importance of telling the truth and the full history of the nation.
President Biden stated, "It's a lesson I learned coming out of - not like real leaders in the civil rights movement - but when I came out of the civil rights movement as a kid, as a public defender." However, in 1987, President Biden admitted that he was not actively involved in the civil rights movement and never participated in marches for equality.
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During a campaign speech for his 1988 presidential run, he clarified, "I was not an activist. I worked at an all-Black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, Delaware. I was involved in what they were thinking, in what they were feeling. But I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma. I was not anywhere else. I was a suburbanite kid who got a dose of exposure to what was happening to black Americans in my own city."
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In the same year, the Miami Herald published an article highlighting that Biden was not an activist and did not march in support of civil rights during the 1960s. President Biden himself acknowledged this, stating, "I was a middle-class kid in a sports coat."
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Despite his previous admissions, President Biden has repeatedly made claims about his efforts to show solidarity with African Americans. In September, he insisted that he was "very engaged" in the civil rights movement and worked extensively in the movement as a kid. In 2021, he stated that he "came out of the civil rights movement."
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During his 2020 presidential campaign, he told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that he was involved in desegregating restaurants, although there is no evidence to support this claim.
President Biden has also suggested on multiple occasions that he was arrested during a civil rights demonstration. However, fact-checkers have found no evidence to support this claim. PolitiFact rated this claim as false, stating that there was no evidence of Biden's arrest during a civil rights protest. The Washington Post gave him its harshest rating of Four Pinocchios for making untrue claims, noting that "too many elements do not add up."
Despite these fact-checks, President Biden has continued to repeat this story, with The Washington Times tallying at least three instances. However, in 2020, he conceded that he was not arrested but rather stopped and unable to move where he wanted to go.
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