Political Quotes

“Mr. President, on Saturday night of last week, Georgia, Atlanta, and America lost a great citizen. Herman J. Russell was one of the greatest African-American business leaders and civil rights leaders the world has ever known. He passed peacefully in his home after a short illness, but his legacy and his life will last forever--not just in the history books but indelibly on the skyline of our city. In 1952 Herman J. Russell started a small plastering company called H.J. Russell & Company. He had just graduated from Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and he came to Georgia to make his fortune and his fame. He started out plastering walls and ceilings, and he finished his career building the Georgia Dome and the Georgia Pacific Building, the 1996 Olympic Stadium, and buildings throughout the Atlanta skyline. While doing so he made a lot of money which he reinvested back not into his investments but into his community. In 1999 Herman Russell by himself gave $4 million to Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, and Georgia State University, and last December gave $1 million to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta to rebuild and help renovate the facility in downtown Atlanta for a hospital for children. He was always giving back more than he asked, but his greatest gift may have been the fact that he enabled Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It is well known that Dr.…”