In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

I was much more comfortable and a much better congressman running in a district that was 37 percent black, where I had to have a white constituency to get elected, than I would have been if I was in a 75 percent black district.

Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.

Nobody Black had learned anything from the `Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the `I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.

What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.

Having personally watched the Voting Rights Act being signed into law that August day, I can't begin to imagine how we could have all been so wrong in believing that more Americans would vote once they were all truly free to do so.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.