"the onliest thing I can do is let 'em see they ain't broke me." AOC Pulls An Ollie Grimes On The Floor Of Congress

I just read the section in Leonard Pitt's novel The Last Thing You Surrender, where Oliver is beaten up by five white men led by Earl Ray, a poor white man.  It's World War II.  They are all working in a ship building factory near Mobile, Alabama.  No ambulance was willing to take Ollive and the factory supervisors allowed a couple of black workers to take him to

"a white hospital that maintained a small ward for Negroes in its basement. . ."

Thelma, who carpools to the factory with Ollie and four other black women goes to see him in the hospital that night.  She finds him sitting up, dressed, bandaged up and he tells her he has a fractured skull.

Thelma gasped.  "Well then, why you sitting up in bed?  Why ain't you lying down?"
He smiled  "'Cause I'm going home," he said.  "In fact, your timing couldn't be better.  I was wonderin' how I was gon' get there."
Thelma was scandalized, "Home?  I ain't takin' you home.  You need to stop bein' such a stubborn jackass and stay here so the doctors can fix you up."
Some indefinable sorrow crept into his eyes then.  "Honey, I aint the one sayin' I got to go home," he explained in a patient voice. "They is."
. . . Doctors done already give me my discharge papers and my prescription.  You gon' stand there all night, or you gon' help a man up?"

She gets him home and he tells her he'll be waiting for her to pick him up tomorrow.  She argues he can't go to work in his condition.  He says if she doesn't pick him up, he'll have to take the bus.

"Ollie looked at her. "That crazy bastard like to kill me."  he said.  "Ain't nobody gon' arrest him, 'cause they was all wearin' masks, so I can't swear in court it was him - and that's if they'd let a nigger testify in the first place, which they won't.  But it was him. . .
A fierce light danced in his one good eye.  "So the onliest thing I can do is let 'em see they ain't broke me.  That's the onliest revenge I get against 'em, to walk through that gate on my own two legs when the bell ring tomorrow mornin' and let 'em see - let 'em all see -even after what they done, Ollie Grimes still standin'." (emphasis added)

[Auto-correct hates this dialect.  I hope I fixed all its corrections and reconnections.]

This is what I immediately thought of when I watched the video below of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking on the floor of the US House of Representatives addressing the fact that Rep. Yoho of Florida had called her names and degraded her on the Capitol steps, and then the next day gave a non-apology apology.  Listen to her speak in her own words.  It doesn't matter what you think of her politics.  The Republicans have abandoned all decorum and decency.  There was a time when members of Congress, despite their differences, treated each other with, at least, outward courtesy.

Rep @AOC: "I do not need Rep. Yoho to apologize to me. Clearly he does not want to. Clearly when given the opportunity he will not & I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse over calling women & using abusive language towards women." pic.twitter.com/XKymFh3Oyf

— CSPAN (@cspan) July 23, 2020

AOC has a little more power to confront her tormentor than Ollie had. But it's the same situation. A white man beating on a woman (this time) of color because he's got some sort of chip on his shoulder and thinks he can insult her with impunity. When are these guys going to learn?

I'd note that Wikipedia says Rep. Yoho, a veterinarian, is NOT running for reelection in November.