The federal justice department is committed to standing up to illegal discrimination, and will continue the fight against racial inequality started by college students 50 years ago, U.S. Attorney Eric Holder Jr. said in a speech he delivered this afternoon in Raleigh.
“There is still work to be done,” Holder said. “This justice department will be about that work.”
Holder was a keynote speaker for a four-day conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which was hatched over a weekend at Shaw University and was an integral part of the civil rights movement.
Holder said he is strengthening the civil rights division of the federal justice department, which has the ability to investigate and prosecute hate crimes as well as racial or other types of discrimination in housing, employment and voting.
Holder, the first African-American to lead the federal justice department, thanked those in the crowd who had led sit-ins, marched despite continuous threats of violence risked their lives and safety to do away with segregation,
Without those sacrifices, Holder said, neither he nor President Barack Obama would be where they are today.
“There is a direct line from that lunch counter to the Oval Office,” Holder said, referring to the Greensboro Woolsworth counter where four African-American North Carolina A&T students demanded that they be served at the whites-only cafeteria.
Just two months after the Greensboro sit-ins, college students from across the South gathered at Shaw University on April 15 and form SNCC.
Though Holder was the keynote speaker, it was John Lewis, the former SNCC Chairman and Georgia congressman, whose impassioned speech invigorated and brought the crowd of several hundred to its feet several times, including a spontaneous signing of
He urged his fellow SNCC colleagues to speak out against injustices that still exist in the United States.
“You’ve gone through the worst,” Lewis told the group of his former SNCC colleagues. “You’ve been thrown in jail, you’ve been beaten.
“What can anyone do to you now?,” he said. “Make some noise.”
