[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 15 (Wednesday, January 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 DO NOT RETURN TO UGLINESS OF THE PAST

  (Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, yesterday members of the 
Congressional Black Caucus took a stand against allowing a symbol of 
segregation and racial division to be honored in the House of 
Representatives. I refer to the decision which was made earlier by 
Members of the new majority party to replace the portrait of Claude 
Pepper, a great humanitarian and champion of civil rights and older 
Americans, with a painting of a renowned segregationist and outspoken 
defender of slavery, former Representative Howard W. Smith. I commend 
Representative Lewis of Georgia for speaking out on this issue, and let 
me also point out that the new chairman of the Rules Committee, our 
colleague Gerald Solomon of New York, to his credit, heard our 
grievance and agreed to remove the portrait. We appreciate his 
response, but I am disturbed by what appears to be a pattern of turning 
back the clock on the progress in racial relations. This incident comes 
on the heels of the controversy over the hiring of the House Historian, 
Christine Jeffrey, who insisted that schoolchildren must be fair to the 
Ku Klux Klan, a secret society who appears in white sheets and who have 
terrorized African-Americans, Jews, Roman Catholics, and others they 
find unacceptable.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope these incidents are just the result of errors 
made in haste during the rush of the first 100 days, and not a more 
sinister campaign to return to the ugliness of the past.

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