On the recordJuly 22, 2020
I thank the gentlewoman from California, Karen Bass, for leading this Special Order to our good colleague and friend, John Lewis. John and I were elected to the House of Representatives about the same time. Actually, he was elected a couple years before I was. But we were colleagues before either of us could have hoped to become Members of Congress. We were kids together in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the youth arm of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. The difference between John and me is I was in law school so I went in the summer, and John was a full-time member, who left school in order to join SNCC. SNCC came out of lunch counter sit-ins. Ella Baker called us all together because it was clear that the Civil Rights Movement was developing a youth arm. And Ella Baker, the great elder of the Civil Rights Movement, decided all of us really should become an organization. John was not the first head of SNCC. Marion Barry was, because he was a lot more political than John, and he is remembered more today for his politics than for his civil rights acumen. When John was elected chair of SNCC, there was nothing political about it. His qualification was not that he was the strongest. His qualification was that he was the bravest. It is almost impossible to describe the risks John took in the more than 40 times he was arrested, because today, we are so used to civil disobedience.…
