Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for giving me the opportunity to speak in honor of the recently departed Congressman William Donlon ``Don'' Edwards, a civil rights champion, supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, defender of the Constitution. I am proud to say that, as a freshman in Congress, I had the honor to serve with Congressman Edwards on the Committee on the Judiciary. I would just like to say a few words about his work on that committee. Congressman Edwards was the living embodiment of the phrase ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' the words etched above the main entrance of the United States Supreme Court Building. When he arrived to Congress in 1963, he noted: ``11 States in the Old South practiced apartheid. There was a House Un-American Activities Committee. And the FBI was out of control threatening individual liberties.'' As a freshman, he wasted no time adapting to his new role in Congress because he recalled that, when he arrived on Capitol Hill, ``Black people couldn't vote in large parts of the country, and if they did, they'd get hanged.'' After visiting the American South where his son Leonard worked to register African Americans to vote, he wrote a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King, telling him that he understood ``the absolute necessity for the immediate passage'' of the Civil Rights Act, and he told Dr.…”