Hank Johnson: “Mr. Speaker, 50 years ago today, on February 10, 1959, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., arrived in Bombay, India, to study…”

“Mr. Speaker, 50 years ago today, on February 10, 1959, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., arrived in Bombay, India, to study the principles of nonviolence developed and used so skillfully by Mahatma Gandhi, which Dr. King himself employed to become this Nation's greatest civil rights leader. I commend my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia, Congressman John Lewis, for introducing this bipartisan resolution that calls upon all Americans to rededicate ourselves to Dr. King's belief that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time. During his month-long travel to India from February 10 to March 10, 1959, Dr. King gained a deeper appreciation for the power of nonviolent civil disobedience, a practice that Dr. King first discovered reading Henry David Thoreau's essay, ``On Civil Disobedience,'' while a student at Morehouse College. Just as Gandhi had used it successfully in resistance to oppressive British colonial rule in India, Dr. King adopted it as a cornerstone of the American Civil Rights Movement, holding firmly and faithfully to it even when the peaceful demonstrations were met by dogs and fire hoses, and worse.”