[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 238 Referred in Senate (RFS)]

111th CONGRESS
  2d Session
H. CON. RES. 238


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             March 1, 2010

      Received and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION


 
    Recognizing the difficult challenges Black veterans faced when 
returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, their heroic military 
 sacrifices, and their patriotism in fighting for equal rights and for 
                 the dignity of a people and a Nation.

Whereas there has been no war fought by or within the United States in which 
        Blacks did not participate, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil 
        War, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, the 
        Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, 
        and Operation Iraqi Freedom;
Whereas Frederick Douglass voiced his opinion in one of his autobiographies, 
        ``Life and Times of Frederick Douglass'', writing, ``I * * * urged every 
        man who could, to enlist; to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his 
        shoulder, the star-spangled banner over his head,'' later remarking that 
        ``there is no power on Earth which can deny that he has earned the right 
        to citizenship in the United States.'';
Whereas during the Civil War, Black soldiers, commonly referred to as the United 
        States Colored Troops, were treated as second-class citizens, the health 
        care and hospitals available to them were substandard, and they often 
        died from neglect of services that was supposed to be administered by 
        medical personnel;
Whereas Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter, members of the first 
        generation of freedom's children, founded the Niagara Movement in 1905;
Whereas in his book, ``Black Reconstruction in America'', published in 1935, 
        DuBois wrote that ``[n]othing else made Negro citizenship conceivable, 
        but the record of the Negro soldier as a fighter.'';
Whereas the 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hell-fighters, fought the 
        Germans during World War I as part of the French Army and served the 
        longest stretch in combat--191 days without replacement--without losing 
        a foot of ground or a man as prisoner;
Whereas at the end of the service of the 369th Infantry, the entire regiment 
        received the Croix de Guerre, which was France's highest military honor, 
        from a grateful French nation;
Whereas Alain Locke, the first black Rhodes Scholar, wrote in 1925 about a ``New 
        Negro'' who had returned from battle with a bold new spirit that helped 
        spark a new mood in the Black community;
Whereas in 1917, Charles Hamilton Houston encountered racism after entering 
        World War I as a commissioned first lieutenant in the segregated 17th 
        Provisional Training Regiment, later writing that ``I made up my mind 
        that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time 
        fighting for men who could not strike back.'';
Whereas Dorie Miller, a messman attendant in the Navy, was catapulted to 
        national hero status and an icon to generations, after displaying 
        heroism on board the USS West Virginia during the Japanese attack on 
        Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941;
Whereas before becoming a famous baseball player, Jackie Robinson was court-
        martialed in the Army for refusing to sit in the back of the bus in 
        1944, and when he was later acquitted, he wrote that ``[i]t was a small 
        victory, for I had learned that I was in two wars, one against the 
        foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.'';
Whereas the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black pilots, flew with 
        distinction during World War II under the command of Captain Benjamin O. 
        Davis, Jr., the highly decorated officer who served for more than 35 
        years and became the first Black general in the Air Force;
Whereas during World War II, the 6888 (known as the ``Six Triple Eights''), the 
        first all-woman Black Postal Battalion who served in England and then 
        France, were given the daunting task of clearing out a two-year backlog 
        of over 90,000 pieces of mail, succeeded in their mission, completed it 
        in three months, and went on to make a positive impact on racial 
        integration in the military;
Whereas during World War II, the Army's 92nd Infantry Division, better known as 
        the ``Buffalo Soldiers'', which traces its direct lineage back to the 
        9th and 10th Cavalry units from 1866 to the early 1890s, was the only 
        Black segregated unit to experience combat during the Italian campaign 
        of 1944-45 with several members later earning Medals of Honor for 
        bravery;
Whereas Reverend Benjamin Hooks, who served in the 92nd Division, found himself 
        in the humiliating position of guarding Italian prisoners of war who 
        were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off-limits to him;
Whereas even after President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 desegregating 
        the military on July 26, 1948, discrimination continued;
Whereas in 1946, when Charles and Medgar Evers tried to register to vote, they 
        were turned away at the polling station;
Whereas after serving overseas in the Army, Charles and Medgar Evers returned 
        home to Mississippi where, in 1952, they began to organize voter 
        registration drives for the National Association for the Advancement of 
        Colored People (NAACP);
Whereas Oliver L. Brown, a World War II Army veteran from Kansas, and Harry 
        Briggs, a World War II sailor from South Carolina, were the fathers of 
        two of the five named plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of 
        Topeka and Briggs v. Elliott, the historic school desegregation cases of 
        1954;
Whereas the Black heroes and heroines of World War II and the Korean War, such 
        as Private Sarah Keys and Women's Army Corps (WAC) officer Dovey 
        Roundtree, won significant victories against discrimination in 
        interstate transportation in landmark civil rights cases, including Keys 
        v. Carolina Coach Company, which was decided in 1955, six days before 
        Rosa Parks' historic protest of Alabama's Jim Crow laws in Montgomery;
Whereas in his address at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther 
        King, Jr., commented on the irony of Blacks fighting in Vietnam to 
        guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia while not enjoying the same rights 
        at home;
Whereas Black veterans who were in the forefront of the leadership of the Civil 
        Rights Movement, with their strong resolve to address the paradox of 
        military service abroad and the denial of basic rights at home, brought 
        deeper meaning to the word ``democracy'', and through their example, 
        transformed the face of the United States;
Whereas the Black veterans of the Nation's wars sowed the seeds for today's 
        bountiful harvest through the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the 
        latter-day Civil Rights Movement, all of which share a common ancestry 
        in the Civil War, without which there would be no Civil Rights Movement 
        and no equal rights for all Americans; and
Whereas today, Black veterans suffer at a disproportionate rate from chronic 
        illnesses and homelessness and are plagued by health disparities: Now, 
        therefore, be it
    Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), 
That Congress recognizes--
            (1) the difficult challenges Black veterans faced when 
        returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, their heroic 
        military sacrifices, and their patriotism in fighting for equal 
        rights and for the dignity of a people and a Nation; and
            (2) the need for the Department of Veterans Affairs to 
        continue to work to eliminate any health and benefit 
        disparities for our Nation's minority veterans.

            Passed the House of Representatives February 26, 2010.

            Attest:

                                            LORRAINE C. MILLER,

                                                                 Clerk.