Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Texas for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor our late former colleague, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. I am honored to have served with and to have been able to learn from such a legend in our Congress. She was a true trailblazer, becoming the first registered nurse to serve in this body. She was the first Black woman ever elected to public office from the city of Dallas when she was elected to the Texas State House and the first woman to ever lead a committee in the Texas chamber. She was also a Presidential appointee appointed by then- President Jimmy Carter as a regional director of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. {time} 1715 She then returned to the Texas Legislature as a State senator, becoming the first Black senator from the Dallas area since Reconstruction. Mr. Speaker, she acknowledged the challenges of being both Black and a woman, once telling a reporter: ``Being a woman and being Black is perhaps a double handicap. When you see who is in the important huddles, who is making the important decisions, it is men.'' That drove her to fight for equity and to give women and people of color more opportunity and access. She came to Congress in 1993 and would later serve as the 17th chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.…”