Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from North Carolina. I thank him particularly for his help in shepherding this bill through the committee. I am grateful, too, to our late, good friend Elijah Cummings for his support and the opportunity to thank him on the floor for his service in the House. Also, I thank my good friend from Michigan (Mrs. Lawrence) for her support of this measure. Mr. Speaker, in 1919, American doughboys returning from the European front and its brutality were committed to benefiting from the opportunity and liberty they secured at great risk and sacrifice to themselves. Many took that commitment to autonomy and freedom home to small towns and communities and homesteads where their families and livelihoods remained. Just over 100 years ago, as September bled over into October in 1919, few eyes in this country were turned to a small agrarian community in northeast Arkansas. There, Black sharecroppers, spurred in part by the tales of opportunity and liberty spun by these returning brave veterans of the war to end all wars, dared to discuss fair pay for their crops. To this day, an accurate account of the tragic loss of life that took place during the Elaine massacre, when White mobs killed more than 100 African Americans, remains widely unknown. But one of the heroic stories that emerged from the ashes of the Elaine massacre was that of Scipio Africanus Jones, one of the great lawyers in Arkansas history.…”