The government, both state and federal, has a duty to be reasonable and accommodating.

I don't have any extraordinary gifts. I'm just an average Joe who grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

If you're not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up. You have to take that long hard look and just believe that if your consistent, you will succeed

If we must grind up human flesh and bones in the industrial machine that we call modern America, then, before God, I assert that those who consume the coal and you and I who benefit from that service, because we live in comfort, we owe protection to those men first and we owe security for their families if they die.

It's going to be very difficult. I don't see the president-elect [Donald Trump] as a legitimate president.

People must understand that people were beaten, arrested, jailed, and some people were murdered, while attempting to register to vote, or to get others to register to vote.

I 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.