[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 11 (Tuesday, January 18, 2022)]
[House]
[Page H207]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REMEMBERING DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, yesterday was the Federal holiday 
honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, and I accepted the challenge of the 
Martin Luther King family, under the name of Martin Luther King III, 
his oldest child: No celebration without legislation.
  So I rise in the middle of the debate and debacle that is going on 
over an ill-fated and wrong policy of the filibuster and cloture to 
read the words of Dr. Martin Luther King that he issued on April 3, 
1968, speaking about having been stabbed by a demented woman and saying 
that if he had only sneezed, he might not have been there even in 1968.
  And so he says: ``And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am 
happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have 
been around here in 1960 when students all over the South started 
sitting in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, 
they were really standing up for the best in the American Dream and 
taking the whole Nation back to those great wells of democracy which 
were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of 
Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have 
been around in 1962 when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to 
straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their 
backs up, they are going somewhere because a man can't ride your back 
unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963 
when the Black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of 
this Nation.''
  Finally, I want to say that he wanted to make sure that his life was 
not in vain and that he would be recognized and remembered for the work 
that he had done.

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