Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the Speaker and acknowledge that 1965 is a very unique and special year. It is the commemoration of the march…”

“I thank the Speaker and acknowledge that 1965 is a very unique and special year. It is the commemoration of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, which symbolized to the world the cry and passion to have your voices heard through the vote. I stand here today asking this body and its leadership to put on the floor of the House the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a bill that was reauthorized in 2006, 2007, under the leadership of President George W. Bush and the Members of the United States Congress, in a bipartisan manner. The vote in the Senate was 98-0, and we had an equally impressive vote here in the United States House of Representatives. The question would be why, a simple task of updating this legislation to ensure that thousands, maybe millions, are not denied the right to vote. I start with that because the walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge was particularly brutal, and I want to give credit to all those who marched, many names that I know, our own colleague John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and many that we have met over the years in Selma. They marched and stood nonviolently against violence and, might I say, under the auspices of the misinterpretation of the law, those law enforcement officers--misguided, of course--that stopped those individuals from expressing their rights.…”