Raphael Warnock: “I rise today as a child of the Civil Rights Movement, as the blessed beneficiary of its bold moral witness in America…”

“I rise today as a child of the Civil Rights Movement, as the blessed beneficiary of its bold moral witness in America, and as a member of only the second generation of our Nation to have full and fair access to the right to vote. Some have argued that in a real sense, our country did not really become a democracy until 1965 when there were those who stood up with courage and challenged the Nation to live up to its ideals. But it is never far from our memory that, at the time of my birth, Georgia's two Senators were Richard B. Russell and Herman E. Talmadge. In many ways, they were effective. They brought great things back to the State of Georgia, but we would not be honest, we would not be telling the full story if we did not remember that they were both archsegregationists and unabashed adversaries of the Civil Rights Movement, which sought to expand the electorate to ensure that this is a House where every American--the citizen--has a voice. Senator Talmadge once said: We love the Negro in his place, and his place is at the backdoor.…”