Political Quotes

“I thank our distinguished colleague, Congresswoman Sewell, for yielding. As you can see, there are many of us who are very eager. Our distinguished Democratic whip, Mr. Hoyer, and I have had the privilege--he, more than I--to travel to Alabama with John Lewis. And thank you this morning for informing the Members that that's a transformative experience. Anybody who travels there and sees what happened in the lifetime of many of us here, and certainly in the lifetime of everyone's parents here, in our very own country cannot help but be moved. So I'm pleased to be joining you, Congresswoman Sewell, Mr. Bonner, Mr. Bachus, Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Bishop, and other colleagues in coming to the floor. Mr. Speaker, as we are all acknowledging, 50 years ago, on a Sunday morning, four precious little girls walked into the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the same day they did every week. These four little girls were there for Sunday school. They were not civil rights activists; they were not agitators or advocates. They had simply come to church to learn, to pray, to be with their friends and classmates. When you visit there, you see they didn't really have a chance. They were in such close quarters when they went down those steps and the rest. These four little girls did not enter the church seeking to become symbols of the struggle of equality; yet, in a moment of brutal, horrific, unspeakable tragedy, they would become icons of a movement for justice.…”