Obama paid tribute to the civil rights movement and President Lyndon Johnson Thursday during an event at the Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. Obama hailed the passage of social programs like Medicare as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was gutted last year by the Supreme Court. The event marked 50 years since Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.

President Obama: “I reject such cynicism because I have lived out the promise of LBJ’s efforts, because Michelle has lived out the legacy of those efforts, because my daughters have lived out the legacy of those efforts, because I and millions of my generation were in a position to take the baton that he handed to us.”

Outside the library, immigrant rights activists chained themselves to a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to protest the Obama administration’s record deportation of immigrants, two-thirds of whom have committed minor infractions, like traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all.