You have to be persistent.

Sometimes you have to not just dream about what could be - you get out and push and you pull and you preach. And you create a climate and environment to get those in high places, to get men and women of good will in power to act.

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. made me very, very sad, and I mourned and I cried like many of our citizens did.

We had teachers, we had high school principals, we had people teaching in colleges and university in Tuskegee, Alabama. But they were told they failed the so-called literacy test.

Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.

When I was growing up in rural Alabama, it was impossible for me to register to vote. I didn't become a registered voter until I moved to Tennessee, to Nashville, as a student.

We need someone who will stand up and speak up and speak out for the people who need help, for people who are being discriminated against. And it doesn't matter whether they are black or white, Latino, Asian or Native American, whether they are straight or gay, Muslim, Christian, or Jews.

I grew up in rural Alabama, 50 miles from Montgomery, in a very loving, wonderful family: wonderful mother, wonderful father. We attended church; we went to Sunday school every Sunday.

Without prayer, without faith in the Almighty, the civil rights movement would have been like a bird without wings.

Without our faith, we wouldn't have been able to succeed. On many occasions, before we'd go out on a sit-in, before we went on the freedom ride, before we marched from Selma to Montgomery, we would sing a song or say a prayer. Without our faith, without the spirit and spiritual bearings and underpinning, we would not have been so successful.

It's not just Barack Obama, but I doubt Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton would have made it to the White House without Selma.

We need comprehensive immigration reform. Dr. King wouldn't be pleased at all to know that there are millions of people living in the shadow, living in fear in places like Georgia and Alabama.

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.

I think Dr. King would be pleased to see the number of elected officials of color - African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and progressive whites.

I was honored to have an opportunity to speak on August 28th, 1963.

I studied the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence in Nashville as a student. And I staged a sitting-in in the fall of 1959 and got arrested the first time in February 1960.

A few days after Bloody Sunday, there was demonstration in more than 80 American cities. People were demanding that the government act.

In 1965, the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7 was planned to dramatize to the state of Alabama and to the nation that people of color wanted to register to vote.

You have to be optimistic in order to continue to move forward.

The action of Rosa Parks, the words and leadership of Dr. King inspired me. I was deeply inspired. I wanted to do something.

When I was 15 years old in 1955, I heard of Rosa Parks. I heard the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. on our radio.

I grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

People come up to me in airports, they walk into the office, and they say, 'I'm going to cry; I'm going to pass out.' And I say, 'Please don't pass out; I'm not a doctor.'

I travel all the time, but when I come back to the South, I see such progress. In a real sense, a great deal of the South has been redeemed. People feel freer, more complete, more whole, because of what happened in the movement.