[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 654 Introduced in House (IH)]

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118th CONGRESS
  1st Session
H. RES. 654

Calling on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. Russell from the 
                    Russell Senate Office Building.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                            August 18, 2023

   Mr. Green of Texas submitted the following resolution; which was 
     referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

_______________________________________________________________________

                               RESOLUTION


 
Calling on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. Russell from the 
                    Russell Senate Office Building.

Whereas this resolution may be cited as the original resolution calling on the 
        Senate to remove the name of Richard B. Russell from the Russell Senate 
        Office Building;
Whereas Senator Richard B. Russell opposed civil rights as ``unconstitutional 
        and unwise'';
Whereas, in 1935, Senator Russell participated in his first filibuster of a 
        civil rights bill, when he and his colleagues in the Senate stopped an 
        anti-lynching bill with 6 days of nonstop talking;
Whereas, in 1936, Senator Russell stated in a re-election campaign speech that 
        ``as one who was born and reared in the atmosphere of the Old South, 
        with 6 generations of my forebears now resting beneath Southern soil, I 
        am willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and 
        insure White supremacy in the social, economic, and political life of 
        our state as any man who lives within her borders'';
Whereas, in 1956, Senator Russell wrote an initial draft of the Southern 
        Manifesto, the bicameral resolution stating support for segregation and 
        refusal to observe Brown v. Board of Education;
Whereas, because President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 
        1964, Senator Russell, along with more than a dozen other Senators, 
        including Herman Talmadge, boycotted the 1964 Democratic National 
        Convention in Atlantic City;
Whereas, on March 17, 1964, the New York Times published an article entitled, 
        ``Relocate Negroes Evenly in States'', in which Senator Russell proposed 
        a voluntary ``racial relocation'' program to adjust the imbalance of the 
        African-American population between the 11 States of the old Confederacy 
        and the rest of the Union;
Whereas, in 1972, shortly after Senator Russell's death, the Senate voted in an 
        overwhelming majority (99-1) that the Old Senate Office Building be 
        named the Russell Senate Office Building;
Whereas historian Gilbert C. Fite wrote at the conclusion of his biography of 
        Senator Russell, ``White supremacy and racial segregation were to him 
        cardinal principles for good and workable human relationships''; and
Whereas Public Law 115-58, a joint resolution signed into law on September 14, 
        2017, rejects ``White nationalism, White supremacy, and neoNazism'': 
        Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
            (1) once again rejects White nationalism and White 
        supremacy as hateful expressions of intolerance that are 
        contradictory to the values that define the people of the 
        United States;
            (2) condemns the use of captions, statutes, memorials, and 
        artwork used or erected to memorialize Senator Richard B. 
        Russell, or any other lawmaker who intentionally disavowed the 
        Declaration of Independence's exhortation that all persons are 
        created equal; and
            (3) calls on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. 
        Russell from the Russell Senate Office Building and to revert 
        to using the building's original name, the Old Senate Office 
        Building, until the Senate finds a suitable honoree.
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