Political Quotes

“I would like to ask this body for just a moment to remember something that there are probably many people who have never heard of for the first time because, for whatever reason, a bit of America's past seemed to just disappear from memory as soon as it occurred. Let me take us back almost 100 years for a moment. The summer of 1919 was commonly referred to after the fact as the ``Red Summer.'' The Red Summer included race riots all over America, White-on-Black riots specifically. There were White individuals moving into Black neighborhoods and devastating those communities. That happened in Charleston, SC; Long View, TX; Bisbee, AZ; Norfolk, VA; Chicago; Washington, DC; Elaine, AR; Knoxville, TN; Omaha, NE; and many other places. Scattered around the country, one after another, month after month, those race riots moved. As World War I veterans--at that time, we called it the Great War--as those veterans returned home, many looking for jobs--and the anxiety that rose up from that--as many Black Americans who had bravely fought in World War I pursued jobs and were unable to get them or were hated by Whites because some of these Black individuals came home and took some of the jobs that they were ``entitled to,'' the tensions began to rise across the country. It burst out into riots. Oklahoma was mostly spared from that in 1919 and in 1920, but on May 30 of 1921, a young man named Dick Rowland who worked downtown, an African-American gentleman, was 19 years old.…”