Political Quotes

“As has been said, John Lewis grew up on a chicken farm to sharecroppers in Troy, Alabama. During that time, there was great pain and suffering for our African-American brothers and sisters in the segregated South. John Lewis's mother, in the summer of 1951, when John was 11, wanted to get him out of the heat of the segregated South, and she sent him to a place called Buffalo, New York, my hometown. Mrs. Lewis had baked for 3 days, because stopping in a diner along the way was not an option for the Lewis family. John Lewis, when he got to Buffalo, he saw young kids, Black and White, playing together in Olmsted Park, now appropriately called Martin Luther King Jr. Park. He saw White women and Black women drinking from the same water fountain. He saw his uncles, Black men, working aside White men in the steel and flour mills of Buffalo, New York. It was from that experience in Buffalo, in the summer of 1951, at age 11, that John said that he believed the desegregation of the South was possible, and he committed his lifework to that cause. On March 7, 1965, as we know, John led a peaceful civil rights march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The idea was to march from Selma to Montgomery, the State's capital, a distance of about 55 miles. There were 148 State troopers waiting at the foot of the bridge for John and the peaceful demonstrators. The State troopers said to cease and disperse. John led his fellow marchers, and they kneeled and prayed.…”