Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I wish to remember and pay tribute to former Senator Harris Llewellyn Wofford, Jr. and his life of dedicated service to our country and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Harris lived a life of service, committed to advancing civil rights and ending injustice. Early in his career, Harris went to India to study nonviolence and the teachings of Gandhi. The lessons he learned during that time would become indispensable as Harris got to know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and became involved in the civil rights movement, helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since reconstruction. When John F. Kennedy was running for President in 1960, Harris was an adviser on his campaign. Days before the election, Dr. King was unjustly imprisoned, and Wofford urged Kennedy and his team to call Coretta Scott King to comfort her and demonstrate his commitments to civil rights. Once Kennedy was elected, Harris Wofford served as Special Assistant to the President for Civil Rights and chairman of the Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights. He urged the President and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to pursue civil rights legislation. Wofford would join Martin Luther King and others in the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marches in 1965 in support of voting rights for African- Americans. While serving in the Kennedy administration, Wofford worked with R.…”