Senator Barack Obama on Civil Rights

We noticed this quote from Barack Obama recently, from a speech he gave at Howard University, September 28, 2007, and we thought it was worth blogging:

“The teenagers and college students who left their homes to march in the streets of Birmingham and Montgomery; the mothers who walked instead of taking the bus after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry and cleaning somebody else's kitchen — they didn't brave fire hoses and Billy clubs so that their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would still wonder at the beginning of the 21st century whether their vote would be counted; whether their civil rights would be protected by their government; whether justice would be equal and opportunity would be theirs. . . . We have more work to do.”

This quote brought to mind this shot, taken from film footage in Dare Not Walk Alone. It shows three students, one black and two white, at a non-violent protest against segregated dining. The police officer is using a cattle prod to "enourage" one student to get into the police car. Eventually, all three students were taken into custody. Interestingly, James Brock, the owner of the restaurant that was the site of the protest, asked the police to stop using cattle prods on the protestors (and they complied).