Political Quotes

“I have a statement that I am going to submit for the Record that pays tribute to the people within my district that have put so much effort into preserving the memory, the artifacts, the books, recordings of black history in northern Virginia, the Society for the Preservation of Black Heritage, the Parker-Gray Society, we have a number of groups that have been very successful. I want to honor them within the Record. I would also mention some of the history that cannot help but be recalled at this time. In fact, it is relevant to some of the issues that we deal with today. For example, in 1846, there was a secession of Alexandria from the District of Columbia and our newspaper reports how African Americans, who had been brought here involuntarily for the purpose of slavery but then had been freed because they were part of the District of Columbia, having lived in Alexandria lined the way to all the polling stations, begging those whites, because white people were the only ones allowed to vote at the time, not to--what it was was a secession from the District of Columbia to make that populated part of northern Virginia part of the Commonwealth of Virginia and thus they would no longer be freed people.”