Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, Wednesday, the 1st of February, begins Black History Month; and on that day I introduced a proposal to have a Congressional Gold Medal issued to civil rights workers--not to each one individually, but collectively. Black History Month celebrates the history of African Americans in our Nation, and a Gold Medal for civil rights workers is so appropriate because the people who fought for civil rights had to fight their own government to get the rights that were embedded in the Constitution for others, which specifically said that they were three-fifths people and that slavery should exist in this country, and the Jim Crow laws that were passed and approved by this Congress and by the State legislatures continued that for another hundred years. So the people like John Lewis and Robert Filner, who serve in this House, the people who engaged in the sit-ins and the marches, that challenged our system and showed it to be wrong and forced it to change itself, not just Dr. King but the Julian Bonds and the farmers and the Ennises and the Belafontes, they deserve recognition.…”