[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 8521 Introduced in House (IH)]

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118th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 8521

  To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Joan Trumpauer Mulholland in 
  recognition of her unique and substantial contributions to American 
 life through her life-long commitment to social justice and equality 
   for all citizens, exhibited both through direct action, at great 
       personal risk, and through ongoing educational activities.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                              May 23, 2024

Mr. Beyer (for himself, Mr. Thompson of Mississippi, Mr. Espaillat, Ms. 
Williams of Georgia, Mrs. Watson Coleman, Ms. Clarke of New York, Mrs. 
Foushee, Ms. Wexton, Mr. Bishop of Georgia, Mrs. Beatty, Mr. Johnson of 
  Georgia, Ms. Norton, Mr. Connolly, Mr. Horsford, Mr. David Scott of 
Georgia, Mr. Meeks, Mr. Clyburn, and Mr. Scott of Virginia) introduced 
 the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial 
                                Services

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
  To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Joan Trumpauer Mulholland in 
  recognition of her unique and substantial contributions to American 
 life through her life-long commitment to social justice and equality 
   for all citizens, exhibited both through direct action, at great 
       personal risk, and through ongoing educational activities.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Joan Trumpauer Mulholland 
Congressional Gold Medal Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Joan Trumpauer Mulholland was born on September 14, 
        1941, in Washington, DC, to Merle (Chandler) Nelson of Oconee, 
        Georgia, and Ealton ``Bud'' Nelson of Essex, Iowa, and went on 
        to directly challenge America's racial segregation practices in 
        the American South during the student-led nonviolent civil 
        rights movement of the early 1960s and became a lifelong 
        educator on the benefits of a multi-cultural, pluralistic 
        society.
            (2) Her expressed Christian faith and understanding of 
        America's founding documents led the young Joan to believe, 
        that ``all men are created equal'' in the eyes of her Creator 
        as well as on the scales of Justice. As a 10 year old girl, 
        Joan's eyes were opened to the extreme inequality of the races 
        when, while visiting her grandmother in rural Georgia, she came 
        upon a dilapidated wooden shack that served as the schoolhouse 
        for the community's Black children and compared it to the newly 
        constructed block and brick school for the community's White 
        children. She vowed then that if she ever had a chance, she 
        would work to change this separate but unequal system.
            (3) Joan graduated from Annandale High School in Northern 
        Virginia in the spring of 1959 and began attending Duke 
        University in Durham, North Carolina, that fall. On February 1, 
        1960, during her second semester at Duke, four young Black 
        college students entered Woolworth's five and dime store in 
        Greensboro, North Carolina, and challenged its segregated 
        dining policy by sitting in at the Whites-only lunch counter. 
        That event set off a nationwide reckoning over Southern 
        segregation practices. When students from North Carolina 
        College visited her church to speak on their experiences 
        challenging the established norms, they invited those present 
        to join the fight. Joan attended that presentation and decided 
        this was her chance to help change things and immediately began 
        sitting in with other like-minded students at downtown Durham's 
        five and dime stores, leading to her first arrest. She also 
        joined the newly formed Student Non-Violent Coordinating 
        Committee (SNCC) and committed herself to working for racial 
        equality through nonviolent means, eventually working alongside 
        such Movement luminaries as John Lewis, Julian Bond, Robert 
        Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Dorie and Joyce Ladner.
            (4) During the summer of 1960, Joan worked with a DC-
        affiliate of SNCC, the Non-Violent Action Group, to protest 
        local segregation policies in the National Capitol Region, 
        integrating establishments in all 3 locales, including those in 
        her own community of Arlington, Virginia. In addition, Joan 
        joined the staff of Senator Clair Engel of California and 
        worked in his office on Capitol Hill until the Freedom Movement 
        once again called for her deeper involvement.
            (5) In the spring of 1961, Joan joined the Congress of 
        Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Rides, working to integrate 
        interstate travel facilities throughout the South. CORE sent 
        her by plane to New Orleans and then by train to Jackson, 
        Mississippi, where she was arrested and placed first in local 
        jails, where she kept a secret diary of her experiences--now 
        considered an important historical artifact of the Freedom 
        Rider era. After two weeks in local jails, Joan was sent to 
        Parchman Penitentiary where she, along with other committed 
        activists, was held on death row for challenging the 
        established policies of segregation. Joan was held in the 
        penitentiary for more than 60 days until she ``worked off'' her 
        court fine and was released.
            (6) In the fall of 1961, Joan was accepted to the 
        Historically Black Tougaloo College on the outskirts of Jackson 
        to further her education as well as to continue challenging the 
        existing segregated order. She became the first full-time 
        matriculating White student in the history of the college, 
        garnering headlines in national newspapers and magazines for 
        what was then regarded as ``reverse integration''. Also, Joan, 
        along with other Freedom Riders who decided to remain in 
        Jackson, became part of the vanguard of the movement for civil 
        and voting rights in the state of Mississippi. She helped form 
        the Non-Violent Jackson Movement, which immediately began 
        challenging segregation on city buses and in public buildings, 
        including courtrooms. It became her mission to help the South 
        move on from its polarized and self-defeating system of racial 
        segregation and learn to build a more equitable social order.
            (7) On April 6, 1963, Joan became a member of Delta Sigma 
        Theta Sorority, Inc., a Black Greek organization. She is 
        recognized as one of the first white members of the esteemed 
        Sorority.
            (8) Joan also committed herself more deeply to the non-
        violent philosophy of protest through her reading of works by 
        Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi. Joan's commitment to 
        nonviolence was sorely tested during the May 28, 1963, Jackson 
        Woolworth's sit-in, which she joined after one of her 
        classmates was knocked from his stool and brutally kicked by a 
        violent bystander and then arrested by the police. Joan took 
        his place at the counter and for the next two-and-a-half hours 
        faced the ire of a gathering mob as they jeered and then 
        punched, pulled, and assaulted the demonstrators, dousing them 
        with ketchup and mustard, salt and sugar, and calling them all 
        manner of racist slurs as attempted to maintain their 
        ``Southern Way of Life''. Joan and her colleagues held their 
        positions at the counter and their refusal to strike back at 
        those assaulting them won the hearts of many who saw the now-
        iconic photograph of the Jackson sit-in and helped turn the 
        tide in the fight for equal treatment of all Americans.
            (9) The Jackson Woolworth's sit-in triggered additional 
        massive nonviolent demonstrations for civil rights within the 
        city of Jackson in which more than 1,000 youth, including Joan, 
        were arrested for challenging segregation. For her role in the 
        Jackson Movement, Joan was targeted for death by the local Ku 
        Klux Klan, as were a number of her colleagues, including NAACP 
        leader Medgar Evers, who would, indeed, be assassinated two 
        weeks to the day after the Woolworth's sit in at his home in 
        Jackson. During the summer of 1963, Joan moved back to 
        Washington, DC, where she attended Evers's burial at Arlington 
        Cemetery.
            (10) In all, Joan participated in more than three-dozen 
        direct action campaigns throughout the South during her college 
        years, including those in Rock Hill, South Carolina and 
        Baltimore, Maryland, before graduating from Tougaloo College in 
        the spring of 1964 and moving back to her native Virginia to 
        begin her adult life. She started her working career as a clerk 
        for the Smithsonian Institution before transferring to join the 
        newly forming Community Relations Service, ``America's 
        Peacemaker'', first housed in the Department of Commerce and 
        later with the Department of Justice. During this time, Joan 
        remained active in the civil rights field, participating in the 
        Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 and in the March Against Fear 
        in 1966.
            (11) Joan eventually married and left public service to 
        start a family. Once her five boys were school-age, Joan 
        rejoined the workforce as a teacher's assistant in the 
        Arlington County Public Schools, where she became known for 
        encouraging a multi-cultural approach to learning, pulling from 
        her many world travels and her knowledge of sociology to help 
        immigrants appreciate their own cultures while helping them 
        integrate into the American way of life. After more than 30 
        years as an educator, Joan retired and embarked on a third 
        career as a civil rights ambassador, traveling the country 
        talking about her experiences and encouraging others to get 
        involved in public life to make a difference.
            (12) For her service in the Civil Rights Movement and as an 
        ambassador of nonviolence, Joan has been awarded many honors, 
        including the Heroes Against Hate Award from the Anti-
        Defamation League, the National Civil Rights Museum's Freedom 
        Award, the International Civil Rights Museum's Trailblazer 
        Award, the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority's Award of Honor, and the 
        Simeon Booker Award for Courage. In February of 2023, Joan was 
        honored by the Virginia General Assembly and was received on 
        the Floor of the Virginia State Senate ``for her inimitable 
        role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and her ongoing 
        commitment to educating others about equality and social 
        justice''. In May of 2023, she was awarded an honorary 
        Doctorate of Humane Letters by her alma mater, Tougaloo 
        College, for her service to humanity.

SEC. 3. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL.

    (a) Presentation Authorization.--The Speaker of the House of 
Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate shall make 
appropriate arrangements for the presentation, on behalf of the 
congress, of a gold medal of appropriate design to Joan Trumpauer 
Mulholland in recognition of her unique and substantial contributions 
to American life through her life-long commitment to social justice and 
equality for all citizens, exhibited both through direct action, at 
great personal risk, and through ongoing educational activities.
    (b) Design and Striking.--For the purposes of the award referred to 
in subsection (a), the Secretary of the Treasury (hereafter in this Act 
referred to as the ``Secretary'') shall strike a gold medal with 
suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions, to be determined by the 
Secretary.

SEC. 4. DUPLICATE MEDALS.

     The Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in bronze of the gold 
medal struck pursuant to section 3, at a price sufficient to cover the 
cost thereof, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and 
overhead expenses.

SEC. 5. STATUS OF MEDALS.

    (a) National Medals.--The medals struck pursuant to this Act are 
national medals for purposes of chapter 51 of title 31, United States 
Code.
    (b) Numismatic Items.--For purposes of sections 5134 and 5136 of 
title 31, United States Code, all medals struck under this Act shall be 
considered to be numismatic items.

SEC. 6. AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS; PROCEEDS OF SALE.

    (a) Authority To Use Fund Amounts.--There is authorized to be 
charged against the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund such 
amounts as may be necessary to pay for the cost of the medals struck 
under this Act.
    (b) Proceeds of Sale.--Amounts received from the sale of duplicate 
bronze medals authorized under section 4 shall be deposited into the 
United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund.
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