Andre Carson: “I rise as a proud person tonight in celebration of black history, because I am indeed a proud recipient of the…”

“I rise as a proud person tonight in celebration of black history, because I am indeed a proud recipient of the achievements that we applaud during Black History Month. I rise today to celebrate black history in a way that was demonstrated by a woman named Rosa Parks who has become affectionately and reverently referred to as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks in her quiet courage on December 1, 1955, in the proud State that Mr. Hilliard represents now, in Montgomery, Alabama, launched a new revolution that opened doors a little wider and brought equality a little closer for all Americans in our Nation. In 1955, Rosa Parks touched off a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, when she was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a gentleman there who was not of her own race. She was bone weary from a long day at work, she was on her way home, she was sitting in a colored section on the bus. But the law said that African Americans in that section had to yield their seats to people who were not African Americans if no seats were available in the white section for them. This was a visceral symbol to African Americans of their second-class citizenship that was continuing to be reinforced by those blatant segregation laws.”