The March on Washington was a March for Jobs and Freedom. There are still too many people who are unemployed or underemployed in America - they're black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American.
John LewisRead
My mother and father and many of my relatives had been sharecroppers.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the legacy of hard work and the challenges faced by one's ancestors.
John Lewis reflects on his family's history of sharecropping, emphasizing the struggles and resilience of his parents and relatives. This acknowledgment of their difficult circumstances serves to honor their sacrifices and perseverance, showing how these experiences shaped his identity and values.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech to highlight the importance of understanding one's roots during a family reunion.
The March on Washington was a March for Jobs and Freedom. There are still too many people who are unemployed or underemployed in America - they're black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American.
The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society.
Customs, traditions, laws should be flexible, within good reason, if that is what it takes to make our democracy work.
I say to people today, 'You must be prepared if you believe in something. If you believe in something, you have to go for it. As individuals, we may not live to see the end.'
We need someone who is going to stand up, speak up, and speak out for the people who need help, for the people who have been discriminated against.
If it hadn't been for that march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, there would be no Barack Obama as President of the United States of America.
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.
Who can blame desperate parents for wanting to escape the horror that their families are experiencing?
And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential except this: father, child, and love. And then, looking at the simplest things, we will all say, Could we have not learned this long ago? Has this not always been embedded in everything that is?
My mother, she killed me, My father, he ate me, My sister Marlene, Gathered all my bones, Tied them in a silken scarf, Laid them beneath the juniper tree, Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
I am the product of the sustained indignation of a branded grandfather, the militant protest of my grandmother, the disciplined resentment of my father and mother, and the power of the mass action of the church.
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