Elijah Lewis: “like my colleagues, I rise today to pay tribute to the brave and courageous men and women and a few young children that…”

“like my colleagues, I rise today to pay tribute to the brave and courageous men and women and a few young children that attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery 36 years ago today, March 7, 1965. Just think, Mr. Speaker, 36 years ago, in many parts of the American South, 11 States of the Old Confederacy, from Virginia to Texas it was almost impossible for people of color to register to vote. As a matter of fact, in a State like the State of Mississippi, in 1965 the State had a black voting-age population of more than 450,000 and only about 16,000 blacks were registered to vote. There was one county in Alabama, between Selma and Montgomery, Lowndes County, where the county was more than 80 percent African American; yet there was not a single registered African American voter in the county. In the little county of Selma, only 2.1 percent of blacks of voting age were registered to vote. People of color not only had to pay a poll tax, they had to pass a so-called literacy test. Interpreting sections of the Constitution of the United States, the constitution of the State of Alabama, the constitution of the State of Georgia and the State of Mississippi, there were black men and women teaching in colleges and universities, black lawyers and black doctors being told they could not read or write well enough. On one occasion, a black man had a Ph.D. degree in philosophical theology and he flunked a so-called literacy test.”