Elijah Lewis: “I think it is so fitting and appropriate to pause and take note of the march on Washington 40 years later. 250,000…”

“I think it is so fitting and appropriate to pause and take note of the march on Washington 40 years later. 250,000 Americans gathered on the Mall and listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. say, I have a dream, a dream today that is deeply rooted in the American dream. This speech, this march, created the climate to make our Nation a better place. We have come a great distance since that time. Forty years ago, in much of the American South, racial segregation was alive and well. Blacks could not attend the same schools as whites. We could not eat at the same restaurants. We could see the signs that divide our Nation: White men, Colored men. White women, Colored women. White waiting, Colored waiting. In the spring and summer of 1963, as the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop) said, people were being beaten, jailed and even killed for participating in nonviolent protest. Millions of Americans could not register to vote because of the color of their skin. In Birmingham, Alabama, the commissioner of police, Eugene Bull Connor, used attacks dogs and fire hoses on peaceful, nonviolent protestors. In the State of Mississippi, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated.”