Sanford Bishop: “I thank the gentlelady for yielding. Alabama named me, but Georgia claimed me. I remember vividly the Sunday of the…”

“I thank the gentlelady for yielding. Alabama named me, but Georgia claimed me. I remember vividly the Sunday of the bombing as a young boy in Mobile, Alabama. I'm reminded of the words of James Weldon Johnson: Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet. Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears have been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last, Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley: four little girls are bright stars in the constellation shining down now as beacons of light for freedom and justice. So today, 50 years after the senseless bombing in Birmingham, it's altogether fitting and proper that we should look back and commemorate the significance of the sacrifice of these young girls, these four young lives. Truly, it was a turning point; and the murder of these youngsters, whose only crime was going to the bathroom in church, sparked a Nation not only to mourn the death of innocence, but to act to quell the turmoil and to move us toward freedom.…”