Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC, one of the organizations that served as the very foundation of the civil rights movement, the movement that brought America closer to its purpose, its established goals in the Declaration of Independence, which we had been striving to achieve and are still striving to achieve, as a place where there is equal opportunity for all people. It was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was responsible for conceptualizing and implementing the sit-in movement. College students came together in the name of justice and equality to desegregate lunch counters and other public places through nonviolent demonstrations. I recently read a copy of the Smithsonian magazine in which there was an article about the sit-in movement. There was an interview with Joseph McNeil, one of the four students from North Carolina A&T who participated in the sit-ins at Woolworth's department store in 1960. While studying engineering physics at North Carolina A&T, Mr. McNeil would take the bus from New York to North Carolina and personally experience the shift in his status as he went from north to south. As an African American, he saw the differences in America traveling those distances, differences that should not have been allowed. He is quoted in the article saying, ``In Philadelphia, I could eat anywhere in the bus station.…”