Political Quotes

“my colleague and friend of the civil rights movement, Representative John Lewis, and I originally introduced S. 774 and H.R. 1933 on April 3, 1993, the day before the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. This past weekend, I found myself remembering those tragic days because of the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. One of the mental photographs of Jacqueline that comes back to me-- and I am sure so many of us--in vivid detail is her comforting Coretta King at Martin's funeral. Widow comforting widow, helping to weather the storm, helping to carry the burden. Coretta once suggested she could not have made it through those days without Jacqueline. Mr. President, I also remember a night in the mid-1950's when my wife and I drove Martin and Coretta King from Baltimore to Washington after Martin had sharply challenged the National Black Fraternity for spending more money on its weekend convention than the whole annual budget of the NAACP. Sitting with my wife in the back seat, Coretta told of her recurring nightmare that at the end of the road in the civil rights struggle, Martin would be killed. He leaned back from the front seat and said she should dream instead of all the things they could do while he was alive. Then he added, ``I didn't ask for this.…”