Thursday at the Congressional Black Caucus Town Hall on Civil Rights, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) said the election of President Donald Trump emboldened racists to “to put on those hoods, put on those sheets.”

Lewis said, “When we had this most recent election, it helped create the climate and environment to bring out something that had been a little asleep, and people feel like now they can just get away with doing everything.”

He continued, “What happened in Virginia made me very sad. We faced mobs, we faced the Klan, we faced overt, open racism during the ’60s. During the freedom rides in 1961, black people and white people couldn’t be seated together on a Greyhound bus, leaving Washington, D.C. to travel through the South. We were beaten, attempted to burn us on the bus, we were left bloody and unconscious by angry mobs.”

“When we attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery just for the right to vote, to protest in a peaceful, orderly, non-violent fashion, we were beaten by the state police and left bloody and some unconscious, and some of our people died,” Lewis added. “After the march on Washington in 1963, there was so much hope and optimism, but 18 days later, a church was bombed in Birmingham, where four little girls were killed on a Sunday morning. What we see happening now, it’s not new.”

He added, “The man that some people voted for just made it very comfortable for people to put on those hoods, put on those sheets, and I tell you, if we’re not mindful or watchful, we are going to go back. We’ve come too far, made too much progress to go back. I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward, and we must go forward.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN