Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, when I began working for the Federal Government I was an auditor and I was assigned to the migrant farm worker program. I went down to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, with no particular ideological bent, and I was brought in to talk to a leader of the barrios down there. It was a beautiful September day, and this man was smiling, as only a father can look when he is expressing the pride he has in his child. His youngest daughter had started school. All of his other children were in the migrant stream. The way that it used to work is that the children had to work in the migrant stream, they needed the money, and the fact is they were not welcome in the Texas school system. We were talking that morning, it was about 10:30, and as we were talking, this little girl came running home. She was crying her eyes out. She was a beautiful little girl, kindergarten, 5 years old. She came into the House, and it was actually kind of a shack. She did not want to tell us what had happened and finally we got it out of her, that in her excitement to show the teacher what she knew, she had burst out a word in Spanish, and at that time the Texas education agency did not allow Spanish to be spoken in the school system, and she had been physically punished on her calves and, in fact, her calves were black and blue.”