Burgess Owens: “in harmony with the theme that the 1-hour presentation on Black History Month has set forth, is there a color line, is…”

“in harmony with the theme that the 1-hour presentation on Black History Month has set forth, is there a color line, is there racism, emphatically, yes, there is. This does not prevent us from noting the positive achievements that have taken place and the progress that has been made. We are quite pleased that there are now 39 Members of the House of Representatives who are African Americans. We have gotten back what we lost certainly after the Civil War. There were some 30 representatives elected, some in the Senate as well as the House. All that was lost. Step by step we have seen gains wiped out over the years during reconstruction, and for about a hundred years before the civil rights movement under Martin Luther King we were steadily going backwards and every achievement that was accomplished was accomplished without the help of the mainstream population, just about every achievement. Many of the achievements were accomplished despite a great deal of hostility and animosity from the mainstream population.”