Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise on the occasion of Black History Month to speak about electoral reform. There was a saying that those who do not learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them. I want to comment for a few moments about a relatively ugly episode in American history, the disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Return first to the era known as Jim Crow, an era in which African-Americans were legally and systematically denied the right to vote. They were, in essence, denied democracy. They were denied full citizenship. They were denied the very things that make us proud to be Americans. Techniques such as poll taxes, literacy tests, requiring African-Americans to recite the Constitution, physical harassment, the denial of jobs for those people who chose or decided they wanted to vote, all of these were mechanisms that were used to systematically disenfranchise African-Americans during this period of our history known as Jim Crow. In the sixties, and as a result of the civil rights movement, we saw a major mobilization as people of good will of all colors, races, and creeds came together to mobilize against this disenfranchisement and begin the movement known as the voting rights effort.”