Thread by @RevDrBarber

All of the people & GA activists that challenged the President today stand in the same tradition of John Lewis when he challenged JFK at the March on Washington in 1963. Some civil rights groups didn’t like it then, but John Lewis was right. And those activists were right today,

and the President would do well to meet with them & diverse moral & religious leaders, as we have been asking for months but his handlers have not facilitated.

Read what John Lewis did 59 years ago: “It is true that we support the administration’s civil rights bill. We support it with great reservations, however.

“Unless Title III is put in this bill, there is nothing to protect the young children and old women who must face police dogs and fire hoses in the South while they engage in peaceful demonstrations.

“In its present form, this bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear of a police state. It will not protect the hundreds and thousands of people that have been arrested on trumped charges.

“What about the three young men, SNCC field secretaries in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest?

“As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of black people who want to vote.

“It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote, but lack a sixth-grade education. ‘One man, one vote’ is the African cry. It is ours too. It must be ours!

“We must have legislation that will protect the Mississippi sharecropper who is put off of his farm because he dares to register to vote. We need a bill that will provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation.

“We need a bill that will ensure the equality of a maid who earns five dollars a week in a home of a family whose total income is $100,000 a year. We must have a good FEPC bill.”

voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/lewis-speech-a…