Eliot Engel: “I represent a district, a very diverse district in New York which is about a third African-American, a third Hispanic…”

“I represent a district, a very diverse district in New York which is about a third African-American, a third Hispanic and a third white. We know better than most people that people have to live together and people have to work together. I think there is nothing that better personifies that than the civil rights struggle. To my right is a picture of us in Montgomery, Alabama joining hands, locking hands and singing We Shall Overcome at the Southern Poverty Law Center. It was one of the very moving moments of the trip. Believe me, there were many, many moving moments at the trip, the feeling of working together and being together and joining in the struggle for civil rights together. Although people like the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), whom I refer to as a real American hero and the gentleman is a real American hero and it is an honor to be his colleague and to be in the House with him, the fact of the matter is we have come a long way in the United States in terms of race relations. But obviously we still have a long, long way to go.”