[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 197 (Tuesday, December 12, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H14353-H14354]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2045
 REPRESENTATIVE MFUME SPEAKS TO HIS DECISION TO LEAVE THE CONGRESS TO 
                           HEAD UP THE NAACP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Mfume] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I actually thought I would wait until later 
in the week or perhaps later in the month to come before the House and 
to express to my colleagues who are here and those who are watching in 
their respective offices a great sense of appreciation, a great deal of 
loss, and, at the same time, a great deal of anticipation of what, for 
me, becomes the beginning of a new journey of a thousand miles.
  Mr. Speaker, I came to this institution in early 1987 with the class 
of the historic 100th Congress. It was a different Congress then, and 
in many respects there were different people. This institution, over 
the years, long before I got here, and I am sure long after I am gone, 
will continue, in many respects, to be the scorn in the eyes of some, 
the hope in the eyes of others, but the only institution that, as 
Americans, we have in our legislative branch of Government.
  So as we contemplate coming and going, for me it was a tough decision 
and yet an easy decision. I was always taught that we come here with 
nothing and we leave this life with nothing, and that it is what we do 
between our birth date and our death date that determines our worth and 
our value and our substance as a human being.

  Those of us who have come to this point to be in service to America 
and to our colleagues and to people all across this country, whose 
policies affect countless millions of nameless, faceless Americans, and 
whose conduct, quite frankly, and whose decorum is watched by persons 
who want to be here and by those who will never get here. But all of 
those things in the aggregate essentially determine what kind of 
government we have and how we, as caretakers of that government, are 
perceived.
  Mr. Speaker, I will miss, obviously, this institution. I have come to 
love it. I believe in the necessity of an open and free Democratic form 
of government. I will miss the individuals here, who I have served with 
on both sides of the aisle, all from different walks of life. We have 
debated great issues together: The Civil Rights Act of 1991, 

[[Page H14354]]
the gulf war, the great decisions to think of and to ultimately pass an 
Americans With Disabilities Act, and numbers of other bills and 
measures that speak to the life style that many of America's people now 
enjoy.
  I will also miss, to some extent, the process. But I think those who 
know me recognize that because I come from humble beginnings, it really 
was not a major decision to give up a safe congressional seat, with 82 
and 84 percent of the vote election after election, and to walk toward 
an organization considered by some to be in disarray and perhaps by 
some to be in disrepair.
  Because I have an excitement inside of me that speaks of a new 
vision, a new vision of hope and possibility, I believe in the aspect 
of coalition. I know what it will take in this country for us to be a 
better Nation. I want to be a part of the process. I agonize, like many 
of my colleagues going home at night, in the comfort of my own 
surroundings, and knowing that violence still plagues our Nation, that 
hatred and racial polarization have not gone away, that many people who 
look like you and look like me, regardless of their station in their 
life, still have a dose of despair in their eyes, that are young and 
have given up on themselves, and they plan now for their funerals 
because they do not expect to reach the age of 25, that drug abuse and 
spousal abuse and child abuse run rampant in a Nation that ought have 
been beyond that and ought to have found lessons to have gotten there.
  All of those things are also part of the America that we love, but 
they beckon me in a different way tonight, and they call me in such a 
way that I cannot say no.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. MFUME. I would be more than happy to yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. First of all, there will be a lot of the 
conservatives that will miss the gentleman. Your willingness, I know on 
the civil rights bill, and other issues that were very complicated, it 
does not mean we do not disagree on certain models, but the gentleman 
will leave this House with integrity, value and substance, Mr. Mfume. 
And I want to let the gentleman know that of a lot of the Members on 
that side, the gentleman has been someone that I have been able to sit 
down with, even with differing issues. The gentleman has been very 
amendable, very supportive, and I want to thank him.
  Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for those kind and 
heartfelt words.
  There is an aspect of service in this America that I talked about, 
even fraught with all those problems and difficulties, that I also need 
to say before I yield back any time I have remaining, and that is the 
relationships, the personal relationships that we develop in here and 
the desire to always want to believe in the best of other people.
  I looked at the gentleman from Missouri, Harold Volkmer, go through 
the agony of watching his wife, die of cancer over a sustained period 
of time. I have talked to Members on both sides of the aisle about the 
birth of a child, or a wedding, or the ability to get a child through 
college, or the need just to find a way to get away from the day-to-day 
agonies of the job and to be people again. I would hope that as we all 
come to grips with what we do in this institution, that we recognize 
that as individuals and as Americans, aside from party affiliation, it 
really is what we do between that birth date and that death date that 
will determine our worth as human beings.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. MFUME. I would be more than happy to yield to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, just to add my comments to 
our friend and colleague from California. I came to the session of the 
Congress that the gentleman came to and have had the highest respect 
for him in the 9 years I have known him.
  The gentleman will leave this body and will leave a great loss to us 
because he has been a key leader and someone that all of us respect on 
both sides of the aisle. But he certainly is the gain for the NAACP and 
those issues which he will lead this country forward on.
  We look forward to working with the gentleman in his new capacity and 
pledge the gentleman our full cooperation. He has been a real 
inspiration to Members on both sides of the aisle. We will miss him, 
but we look forward to his leadership on an even greater height for all 
of America.
  Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much. I know I am 
out of time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jones). The time of the gentleman from 
Maryland has expired, but we would like to give 3 or 4 additional 
minutes to the fine gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. MFUME. I thank the Chair for his generosity, and I promise I will 
not use all of that, because despite the best wishes of some, I am 
still going to be around here for a few more weeks raising you know 
what.
  I do want to say, before sitting down that I believe that we have a 
golden opportunity, and certainly I do, heading up the NAACP, America's 
oldest and largest civil rights organization, to bring a sense of 
balance, to add to the dialog, to seek coalition, to give hope to our 
young people, to defy the odds, to put in place an apparatus for 
economic empowerment, to do away with some of the disparities in our 
society, to emphasize against educational excellence and individual 
responsibility, and to really provide a clear and consistent path that 
might be visible to other people.
  So I welcome that task and I thank all of my colleagues who I have 
served with, for their friendship over the years, for their counsel, 
for their ability to engage in debate on those principal issues that 
they believed in, but most of all for being a part of what I consider 
to be the greatest institution of American Government, and that is the 
House of the people.

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