Hoyer Remarks at Press Conference During Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage
“This is my 17th visit with [the] Faith and Politics [Institute] to Montgomery –Birmingham, for some. As my dear, dear friend John Lewis would say, ‘It's good to be back in Selma one more time, one more time.’ The reason he came back and the reason I come back, and my colleagues behind me have come back, and others is because it's like watching a movie, in one sense.”
“You watch the movie, it’s a really good movie, you get a lot out of it. Then it comes on TV and you watch it a second time and you got more out of it. … And I get something more out of my visits to Montgomery and Birmingham and Selma every time I go.”
“Now let me tell some of you who are viewing this perhaps on television or hearing it on the radio, I graduated my high school in the late '50s and went to college in the early '60s. I want to tell you I grew up thinking Montgomery and Birmingham were two of the worst places on earth because there were awful things happening here, and we were seeing them on television. We visited [Kelly] Ingram Park, we visited Selma, looked down the bridge – awful things happened.”
“But one thing you get out of this is how much better the things are today. They're not perfect. The union is not perfect. You have not, as the song says, ‘Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on 'till victory is won.’ We have not won victory, but we've won victories.”
“And I was struck by the young woman from Alabama Power – beautiful, young woman – now of course everybody is young from my perspective – who spoke about how proud she was to be an Alabaman, how proud she was to have us come here and see the people of Alabama. Now, this is a woman who is either a child or a grandchild or a great-grandchild of slaves.”
“And you can tell that she was genuine in her belief that Alabama had changed, and along with it, America has changed. And we honor some people, one of whom sitting right behind us, who as you said had the courage, in her case to sit down, to stand up for justice.”
“When our founding fathers said they wanted America to be all men – and surely today we would have written all men and all women – are created equal in the image of God. And yet we saw so many of those children of God abused and perceived as less than human beings.”
“I come back to Alabama – to Montgomery and Selma – first, because I was so close to John Lewis. I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge 15 times with John Lewis, seven of which I held his hand as we walked across. That was one of the highlights of my life because John Lewis exuded the best of us in America, the best of us as human beings, the best of us as children of God.”
“So I want to congratulate the people of this state who are moving forward, as that young Black woman referenced as she welcomed us to Montgomery and lunch, at the stadium.”
“Jim Clyburn, I want to congratulate you for coming back.… Jim Clyburn and I have known each other for half a century and for half a century and more, Jim Clyburn has been on the frontline of fighting for justice, equality, decency, and humanity. And I'm so honored to be here with him, 'one more time,' in Montgomery, in Birmingham, and in Selma. Thank you.”