Johnny Isakson: “I rise as a Senator from Georgia to express my support and join a unanimous Senate in support for extension of the…”

“I rise as a Senator from Georgia to express my support and join a unanimous Senate in support for extension of the Voting Rights Act. I come to the well to speak from a different perspective than some. I was born in the South in 1944, educated in its public schools in the 1950s and 1960s. I was in the fourth grade when Brown v. Board of Education was the ruling of the Supreme Court. I was in high school when the public schools of Atlanta were integrated. I went to the University of Georgia when the first students integrated that institution. I lived through all the changes that many refer to as history about which they have read. I lived through it, being there and seeing the heroes and the challenges and the transition through which the South has gone. Still, in speeches today we hear very often about the South in historic times, where wrong practices have been righted, but somehow we don't hear about the heroes who made the Voting Rights Act go from a piece of paper and a law to practical reality in the South. I am proud of so many citizens in Georgia, Black and White, urban and rural, Republican and Democrat, who over the past 41 years have made not only the letter of that law but the spirit of that law the spirit of our State--not the least of whom is Congressman John Lewis, a man of unquestioned character and, for anyone who lived during the 1960s and 1950s, unquestioned courage.…”