Political Quotes

“I want to talk now about the thing that I think will help not only with slavery remembrance, but also will help us with other issues that have not been resolved. That is the establishment of a department of reconciliation. Mr. Speaker, we have not reconciled. We have not. There are chasms that we cannot see but that we can experience. We need to span the chasms that divide us. To do so, we need to have a methodology by which it can be accomplished. To have that methodology, we have to have a means in place. This would be the means by which the methodology could be enforced and put into motion so that we can get reconciliation. Reconciliation. There ought to be in this country what we could not do after the war because President Johnson was more interested in the antebellum aspect of the war. He would have gone back if he could have, but he could only go so far. He did limit forward movement, so we didn't get reconciliation. We need a department of reconciliation with a secretary of reconciliation. A person that wakes up every morning with the mission of helping us to reconcile the differences in a very positive way, I might add--the differences that separate us, the chasms that we failed to span over the centuries. Remember, slavery lasted for more than two centuries, it wasn't a 20- year event. That is why some of the aspects of the powerlessness are still inculcated into our society.…”