Hillary Clinton recalled when a high school valedictorian told her he might not be able to attend medical school due to the lack of advanced classes in biology, chemistry and math.
She said the University of Arkansas had notified him that he would have to take a fifth year of high school to complete these classes first.
"Wow, it just hit me so hard because here's a kid who had done everything that he was asked to do and more," Clinton said, "but because his school district was poor and small, it didn't offer courses."
She spoke at the 10-year anniversary of the Children's Library and Learning Center named after her on Monday.
During her husband's first term as governor in 1979, she said the two decided to invite every valedictorian and salutatorian to the Governor's Mansion and honored the graduates from every high school in the state.
She said that when Bill Clinton was reelected in 1982, he told her "we have to do more" so that "there's never another kid who comes to our event and says their high school did not offer what he or she needed to do whatever it is they're dreaming of."
This was the "genesis" of their initiative to gather feedback from all 75 counties in Arkansas and push the General Assembly to adopt education standards and increase taxes to give teachers a pay raise, she said.
Clinton said she visited the Central Arkansas Library System often when her daughter, Chelsea, was young, but she "could only imagine" how exceptional and exciting it would have been to go to a library dedicated solely to children.
"We are very big supporters of what you do and what this means to the library system and most importantly to the children of Little Rock," she said.
The vision of what a modern 21st-century library in Little Rock can be, came to life, she added.
"We've got to knit our families and our communities tighter together," she said. "We have too much divisiveness, too much finger-pointing. ... We need to get back to basics about how we connect with each other, relate to each other. As Bobby [Roberts] said (referring to the former library director and gubernatorial aide), 'there's nothing more important to me than helping children achieve their God-given potential.'"
The anniversary of the library coincides with the 10-year anniversary of Too Small to Fail, a program of the Clinton Foundation to put research to work and convince parents and adults to read, talk and sing to babies and toddlers in an effort to develop their brains and vocabulary early on.
"That to me, is a perfect connection to what you do here every single day," Hillary Clinton said. "Because every one of our children are too small to fail, we should not give up on any child, we should not walk away from any child, we should not be discouraged by whatever challenges children face."
The library helps to "spark" the God-given potential that every child has, she concluded.
Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott recognized that Hillary Clinton was an example to everyone that "we can make change whether we have a title or not."
"To put her name on 12th street, means something," he said. "It means something for every Black boy, Black girl, white boy, white girl, brown boy, brown girl, that no matter where you live, you can be the change in a positive standpoint."
Roberts, the former aide to Bill Clinton, said Hillary Clinton did "so much" for children in Arkansas and across the world.
He called current efforts to hold librarians liable for "distributing obscene materials" -- as Act 372 would do -- "fruitless."
"You don't want to turn the library, you don't want to have a nanny state, you don't want the library making those decisions; those are decisions that rest with the parents," he said. "If they don't want a kid to read about gay marriage, monitor what they're reading."
Roberts said he has gay friends with children and the LGBTQ community is present in the Little Rock community and everywhere.
"This is a public entity and they have to buy the materials that they want," he said. "That material makes up about this much of what's in that children's section, and if you could find obscenity anywhere, I would be amazed. ... It should be a non-issue."