Remarks at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama

Thank you for that introduction, and for the opportunity to speak. In the last 12 weeks since I've started campaigning, I've been to 27 different states and 67 different cities, and every place I have tried to listen and I have tried to learn. I didn't agree with everything I heard, but I certainly gave people an opportunity to change my mind.

And I can only tell you in 12 years as the Mayor of New York City, I got an awful lot of advice. A lot of it I got was at my local AME church where Floyd Flake is the minister. He would tell me when he thought I was wrong, and I respected his right to be wrong.

Anyway, I wanted to thank the Afro-American Gospel Choir. I would join them, but no one would ever confuse my singing with a joyful noise.

For over a century, Brown Chapel has been a source of light and of leadership. This is where the Selma-to-Montgomery marches started.

The bonds formed within these sacred walls helped uplift our nation. It really is an honor to join you today – and thank you very much for this warm welcome. I do listen, and I'm very proud of the progress that we made in New York City over 12 years. We made sure that I think not every person but every group really benefited from the changes in New York City, and I think we need that for this country.

I do agree with the Reverend, that the wrong person is living in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And we have to find somebody to replace him who is a doer and that actually listens and makes a difference, and not just say I understand but things never get implemented. But we for too long have gone on with listening and letting the status quo continue.

Let me give you just one number: the average wealth of a Black family is ten percent of the average wealth of a white family. If you can sit there and not try to do something about that, shame on us.

Anyway, let me thank my friend, the Reverend Sharpton. I for 12 years went to the House of Justice on Martin Luther King Day. Only once did I get yelled at. In the end, we are friends, and Al and I have been friends and worked together for an awful long time.

My predecessor refused to ever shake hands with the Reverend, and so when I got elected I think it might have been the day that I took office or maybe the day I got elected, we staged an event – there was a dinner at one of the hotels, the organization was 100 Black Men, and it was just an accident that the cameras were focused on specific spots where he walked in and I walked in, and we shook hands.

And that started a change in New York City, it just said that the City government was not going to discriminate, the City government was going to be open to everybody, the City government was going to listen to everybody. And I think both the Reverend and I stayed true to that message. So Al, thank you for that.

Let me also welcome the Right Reverend Harry L. Seawright, the Reverend Sherita Moon Seawright, and your senator – Senator, welcome – Doug Jones, and your congresswoman here in Alabama's 7th district, Terri Sewell.

Before I came to Selma, earlier this week I went up to Medford, Massachusetts which is where I grew up. I went back to my childhood home. One of my earliest memories of life is actually of Election Day – and I want to tell you why.

I was a Boy Scout, and our job was on Election Day to escort senior citizens from their buses and taxis and cars to the voting booth. And twice, in my Boy Scout uniform I had the honor of giving my arm to our town's most famous citizen – Mrs. Amy Earhart, the mother of the famous aviator, Amelia Earhart.

She was in her 80s at that time. And the reason I remembered it was for most of her life, Mrs. Earhart did not have the right to vote. This was a long time ago and she was elderly. When she gripped my arm, I felt like I was really living history. I had never been that close to anybody that was famous and name was in the newspaper. It was my first experience in realizing just how sacred the right to vote really is.

And of course, in Alabama and across much of the country, there were still millions of women and men who were simply being denied the right to vote simply because of the color of their skin.

Here in Selma, 55 years ago, Miss Annie Lee Cooper was beaten and jailed as she marched for that right.

Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed as he marched for that right.

John Lewis suffered a fractured skull on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as he marched for that right. I know we're all praying for John – and may he march with us for many years still to come.

So many others have sacrificed for the right to vote. I think they were all patriots. Today, we honor all of them, especially the women. And we rededicate ourselves to the march for full voting rights that are still under attack.

Because the fact is, if voter suppression had ended after President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act – it did not actually end it. And if it had, then Stacey Abrams would be Governor Abrams.

I have for a long time been a big supporter of Fair Fight, her national organization that she is leading so well. Access to the polls for all people should never be denied. I've always worked to make it easier to register and to actually vote – not just the right to vote, we've got to be able to get to the polls as well.

That work will continue to be an important priority for me. No state should be able to pass laws designed to lock certain people out of their elections. And we should be opening up new polling places, not shutting down existing ones.

As we work to secure full voting rights, I think we also have to recall that Dr. King marched not only for equal rights – but also for economic justice.

Dr. King understood that the right to vote was only the first step in the march to true equality, because true equality means that wealth in this country should have no relation to race or ethnicity. That's what my Greenwood Initiative is all about.

Let me just take a few seconds to tell you about it. You may know about Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma – but until a year ago, like so many other Americans, I did not. Greenwood was a thriving and prosperous Black neighborhood, until a white mob attacked and destroyed it back in 1921. More than 200 African-Americans were killed.

It was one of the worst tragedies in American history. But sadly, it was just another instance of Black families being systematically robbed and exploited, something that didn't end with slavery – but continued with Jim Crow and redlining.

In today's reading from Isaiah: 'Do right, seek justice, and defend the oppressed' was the call to action. That's what our Greenwood Initiative resolves to do.

We're going to do it by achieving three things. One: we're going to help one million more Black families own a home. Two, we're going to double the number of Black-owned businesses. And three, we're going to triple the wealth of Black families to substantially close the racial wealth gap.

After the attack on Pettus Bridge, Dr. King issued his famous call to all Americans to take up the struggle that Selma helped reveal to the world. 'No American is without responsibility,' he wrote, in his telegram to faith leaders. 'The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden.'

That was true then – and it is true now. All of us share the responsibility to honor Selma's history. And all of us share a responsibility to exercise the sacred right to vote for which so many struggled and died.

On behalf of my family, I want to thank you for welcoming a good Jewish boy from Medford to your church today. I look forward to meeting more of you after the service.

And I look forward to following in the steps of Annie Lee Cooper, John Lewis, Dr. King, and so many more of our nation's heroes when we march across the bridge this afternoon.

God bless and thank you.