Political Quotes

“It is an honor, the likes of which I can't think of a comparison, to stand here, in this week of April 2018, and commemorate a battle undertaken by a student that I would argue was a continuation of the American Revolution. The American Revolution began when a group of White male landowners cast off the tyrannical throne which lorded over them from across an ocean, but it moved forward 80 years later when a million Americans, through disease and starvation and battlefield death, gave their lives to rid this Nation of the horrific institution of slavery. Then 55 years later, I would argue that it continued when the franchise was extended through women's suffrage to women. Then 30-plus years after that, by a 16-year-old high school student at the R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, who had heard about the foundational ideas espoused by a slave owner named Jefferson who wrote that all people are created equal, but couldn't reconcile that with her life experience, because in the county where she lived, a brand-new high school had been built, but only some kids could attend it. So in extending this American Revolution that continues to this day, this 16-year-old young woman, Barbara Rose Johns, led a school walkout that was the only student-initiated case amalgamated into the decision in Brown v.…”