To Question The Legitimacy Of The Next

I Thought I Was Going To Die A Few Times. On The Freedom Ride In The Year 1961, When I Was Beaten At The Greyhound Bus Station In Montgomery, I Thought I Was Going To Die. On March 7th, 1965, When I Was Hit In The Head With A Night Stick By A State Trooper At The Foot Of The Edmund Pettus Bridge, I Thought I Was Going To Die. I Thought I Saw Death, But Nothing Can Make Me Question The Philosophy Of Nonviolence.

I Heard Of Martin Luther King Jr. When I Was 15 Years Old. I Heard Of Rosa Parks. And I Met Dr. King In 1958 At The Age Of 18. I Met Rosa Parks ... But To Pick Up A Fun Comic Book - Some People Used To Call Them "funny Books" - To Pick This Little Book Up, It Sold For 10 Cents, 12 Pages Or 14 Pages? 14 Pages I Digested. And It Inspired Me. And I Said To Myself, "if The People Of Montgomery Can Do This, Maybe I Can Do Something. Maybe I Can Make A Contribution."

When I Was 15 Years Old In The Tenth Grade, I Heard Martin Luther King, Jr. Three Years Later, When I Was 18, I Met Dr. King And We Became Friends. Two Years After That I Became Very Involved In The Civil Rights Movement. I Was In College At The Time. As I Got More And More Involved, I Saw Politics As A Means Of Bringing About Change

We Have So Many Issues Today That We Need To Confront. Comprehensive Immigration Reform. We Have To Solve The Issue Of Poverty, The Issue Of Hunger, The Issue Of War - Spending Billions Of Dollars To Kill Rather Than To Build. We Have To Deal With The Fact That All Of Our Children Should Be Receiving The Best Possible Education.

I Was So Inspired By Dr. King That In 1956 With My Brothers And Sisters And First Cousins, I Was Only 16 Years Old, We Went Down To The Public Library Trying To Check Out Some Books And We Were Told By The Librarian That The Library Was For Whites Only And Not For Colors! It Was A Public Library! I Never Went Back To That Public Library Until July 5th, 1998, By This Time I'm In The Congress, For A Book Signing Of My Book "walking With The Wind"