Articles

Good morning.

It is my honor to be with you all this morning as we honor the lives and the memory of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley here at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

To my friend and colleague, Congresswoman Terri Sewell, the first African American woman to represent the state of Alabama in the U.S. Congress, thank you for your commitment to ensuring the lives of these young girls and the lessons we learned during this dark time in our history are never forgotten.

I’d also like to acknowledge my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus who are here today; Congressman Lewis, Congressman Conyers, Congressman Butterfield, Congresswoman Moore, Congresswoman Clarke, Congresswoman Bass, Congresswoman Beatty, Congresswoman Kelly, Congresswoman Brown, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Congresswoman Bass.

Mayor Bell, Pastor Price, and Dr. French, thank you for your leadership of this church and of this city.

This year, we’ve commemorated the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

We celebrated as both Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass received long overdue honors in the U.S. Capitol and now have statues beside other great Americans who made significant contributions to the history of our nation. 

Just this week, we honored the 4 little girls of this church with the Congressional Gold Medal – the highest civilian honor our nation can bestow.

This year, we also celebrated the fact that though they tried to stop us, African Americans outvoted every racial and ethnic group in the country. 

I want to make sure you heard what I said.

In spite of voter ID laws, moving polling locations, intimidating people so they wouldn’t vote, and all the other tactics people tried to employ – we still went to the polls in greater numbers than ever before.

This is important to note as I believe it is one of the reasons we’re seeing a lot of the things I’m about to mention.

While we’ve celebrated many milestones this year and the leaders who helped us achieve them, we’ve also experienced what appear to be significant setbacks to the progress that has been made.

We saw the Supreme Court strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act - even though there is hard evidence provided by Congress that discriminatory voting practices still exist.

We’ve seen an attack on federal nutrition and educational programs like food stamps and Headstart that have helped to lift and keep families out of poverty.

We’ve seen a repeated attack on the Affordable Care Act by Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.

Why we cannot agree that helping more than 30 million people get the healthcare they need is a good thing for this country, I don’t know.

But, what has given me great hope this year is the way I’ve seen so many people speak up and speak out against the concerted efforts to suppress our vote and our voices.

This year, and probably within the past five years, we’ve seen a new wave of activism in this country to combat the efforts to keep overt and institutional racism and discrimination alive.

We’ve seen the use of social media tools to empower, galvanize and mobilize people across the nation and across the world.

We’ve seen a new wave of opinion and thought leaders who have developed their own followings and who have connected to each other to ensure their goals are the same, even if their messages may be a little different.

These leaders have helped inspire action in ways that have changed national conversations to ensure that violations of human and civil rights across this country are not ignored.

To me, this is the civil disobedience and the Civil Rights movement of today.

Yes, we are still fighting many of the same battles we fought during the 60s, but we have to recognize that they may look a little different and therefore, require different strategies to overcome.

So, as we gather here today to honor the lives of Addie Mae, Denise, Carole, and Cynthia in what was a critical turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, we are also here to discuss where we’ve been and where we are going.

The discussions we will have with Member s of this community and Members of the CBC will help us identify the challenges we’ve faced and the ones we are facing right now.

We will also discuss the roles each of us can play in making sure we stay on the path to progress.

I am joined here on the stage with two of my esteemed colleagues Mr. John Conyers and Mr. John Lewis who have witnessed firsthand the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement and who have been instrumental in orchestrating the change that has happened on the grassroots level and in Washington, DC