I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of the civil rights movement to the next generation.
John LewisAs a young child, it became crystal clear to me that there were certain rights and privileges that other people had that my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great grandparents didn't have - that it was an ongoing struggle to realize the dream of the 14th and 15th Amendment.
John LewisWhen I was growing up in rural Alabama, as a young child, about 50 miles from Montgomery, and we would visit the little town of Troy, or visit Montgomery or Tuskegee, I would see the signs that said, "WHITE MEN - COLORED MEN," "WHITE WOMEN - COLORED WOMEN."And I would come home and say to my mother and father and my grandparents, "Why?" "Why this?" "Why that?" And they would just tell me, "That's just the way it is! Don't get in the way. Don't cause trouble."
John LewisI remember being at the church a few hours after the church was bombed in Birmingham, the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was very hard and very difficult to stand on that corner across the street from the church. Or to go Mississippi and search for the three civil rights workers who came up missing. There is a lot of trauma.
John Lewis