John Spratt: “I shudder to follow that eloquence. The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) and I grew up 30 miles apart. He is…”

“I shudder to follow that eloquence. The gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) and I grew up 30 miles apart. He is from Charlotte, North Carolina. I am from York, South Carolina. Not Alabama, not Mississippi, but still the segregated south. I was 12 years old in 1954, about 18, 19, 20 years old when the civil rights movement started. And while York County was not the same as Neshoba, Mississippi, when the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) made his first stop in Rock Hill, South Carolina, 13 miles from where I live on the Freedom Rider bus, he was met by thugs in the bus station who took him on, took him down, and he received the first of I guess many batterings on the head, bloodied up badly. But here is the profound point about it and the reason this pilgrimage we made is so important to understanding ourselves as a people and understanding what this movement is about. A police officer, as I recall the story, had been standing on the sidelines watching the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) take the beating, and at some point he sort of interceded and asked him, do you want to prefer charges, which he could have done. And he said, no, I do not have anything against him individually. I am against the system, the oppression, the way it affects white people and black people, causes them to do things like this. I did not come down here to get this man in trouble. I came to lift us all out of this oppression.”