Political Quotes

“I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Dr. James Cameron on what would have been his 108th birthday. James Cameron was born in La Crosse, WI, on February 25, 1914. A civil rights pioneer, Dr. Cameron fought his entire life to create an accountable and equitable world. Dr. Cameron left an indelible mark on our country as the only known person in the United States to survive a lynching, an event in 1930 at the age of 16 which would inevitably change his life. Dr. Cameron was an early activist for the Civil Rights movement, desegregating the movie theater in the Indiana town where he and his wife, Virginia, lived. He worked with the NAACP, founding branches in Madison, WI, as well as Muncie and South Bend, IN. He also served as Indiana's director of civil liberties. In 1952, the Cameron family came to Milwaukee. Over the years, he acquired pieces like Ku Klux Klan robes, as well as a piece of rope that had been used during his own lynching. After visiting Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, he set out to create a museum with these pieces to educate the public about the injustices Black people faced in America. At age 74, he founded America's Black Holocaust Museum in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood of Milwaukee. Three years later, in 1991, Indiana Governor Evan Bayh gave him the key to the city of Marion where he had miraculously survived the lynching 61 years prior. Dr.…”