Political Quotes

“I think of my mother, who was probably in many ways when I was a kid my greatest doctor. I do not know how she could do it, but if I had a fever or was catching a cold, somehow or another it seemed as though she could come into the room, put her hand on my head and the fever would be reduced, and, if it did not get reduced, I certainly felt like it did. The legacy of what it is that we have had the opportunity to experience, the roles that our parents and grandparents and others have played in terms of being the bridges and being the shoulders, I could never do anything in relationship to the celebration of African American History Month without celebrating my parents, my mother and my father. My father is 87 years old; and, fortunately, he is still around. We say that he was a doctor of sorts, but he really was not. He was a doctor because he believed so much in himself. I shall never forget, he actually cut a calf's leg off once. I mean, we were farmers, and the calf's leg got hurt and set up gangrene, and my father decided that he had to save this calf, that we could not afford to lose it. So he simply got his ax, sharpened it as sharp as he could get it, got himself some ashes and soot and coal oil and chloroform, had my brothers and I to hold this calf, and cut the calf's leg off. The calf lived, and we had a three-legged cow from then on.”