Pat Downs

“Sometimes it seems like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.”
― Fannie Lou Hamer

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
― Fannie Lou Hamer

“In life, Lincoln’s motives were moral as well as political—a reminder that our finest presidents are those committed to bringing a flawed nation closer to the light, a mission that requires an understanding that politics divorced from conscience is fatal to the American experiment in liberty under law. In years of peril he pointed the country toward a future that was superior to the past and to the present; in years of strife he held steady. Lincoln’s life shows us that progress can be made by fallible and fallen presidents and peoples—which, in a fallible and fallen world, should give us hope.”
― Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

“One thing was left, as clear and perfect as a drop of rain—the desperate need to stand together … They would rise and fall and, in their falling, rise again. —SANORA BABB, WHOSE NAMES ARE UNKNOWN TWENTY-FOUR On the last day of January, a cold front moved into the valley”
― Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds