Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I cringe often when I hear people talk about the 1960s as the civil rights movement. I always put an ``S'' on that. The Stono Rebellion was in 1739. It was a civil rights movement. Denmark Vesey's insurrection was in 1822. It was a civil rights movement. The Niagara Movement that led to the creation of the NAACP more than 100 years ago was a civil rights movement. John Lewis and I met in October 1960 at a civil rights movement. For as long as there are people held in suppression, there will always be a movement for civil rights. However, in any movement there will be a few--sometimes only one--that rise head and shoulders above all others, and so it was with my good friend, John Robert Lewis. When we met the weekend of October 13, 14, 15, 1960, on the campus of Morehouse College, there was a little bit of an insurrection taking place. We, who were college students, felt that we knew how best to do things. We were not listening to Martin Luther King, Jr., and a few others, and so we asked King to meet with us. And he did. We went into the meeting around 10 o'clock in the evening. We did not walk out of that room until 4 o'clock the next morning. I came out of that room having had a Saul-to-Paul transformation. I have never been the same since. But listening to King's plea for nonviolence, I decided, along with most others, to accept nonviolence as a tactic. But not John Lewis. He internalized.…”