[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6493-H6499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  WHAT APPROACH SHOULD WE TAKE TO THE TEACHING OF CURRENT EVENTS AND 
                            AMERICAN HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today we passed the Church Arson Prevention 
Act, and I think practically every Member present voted for that act. 
It is to the credit of this Congress that this is a bipartisan effort 
to deal with a heinous set of crimes and to let the message go forth 
from the leadership of this Nation that we will not tolerate such acts.
  There is a disease out there that every now and then manifests 
itself, and the leadership of the Government has the duty and 
obligation to let it be known that we will not encourage it, we will 
not condone it, and we will do everything possible to make certain that 
those who are guilty are punished.
  I want to talk a little bit about the burning of black churches in 
the south, but I want to talk about four other things that also relate 
to it, although it is not obvious how closely related they are on the 
surface.
  I want to talk about the recent controversy surrounding the 
standardization of a national curriculum for history, especially for 
American history.
  I also want to talk about the controversy surrounding the invitation 
to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to speak at a Prince George's 
County school and what happened as a result of that controversy.
  I want to talk about a man named Kenneth Johnson, who objected to 
Justice Thomas speaking there. Mr. Johnson is a school board member, 
and he felt that there was some problems there, and I think Mr. 
Johnson's allegations and his concerns deserve to be looked at more 
closely.
  I also want to talk about the recent Supreme Court decision on the 
Voting Rights Act.
  And, finally, I want to talk about the extremist budget cuts of the 
Republican majority, and I want to insist that all of these things are 
related and show how they are related.
  I think the overall theme of what I am trying to say relates to a 
bigger issue of what approach should we take to the teaching of current 
events and of American history. What approach should we take to the 
teaching of current events and American history?

  What was the controversy in Prince George's County all about? Why did 
Kenneth Johnson object as a school board member to Justice Clarence 
Thomas speaking at the school in a ceremony where people would not have 
a chance to question Justice Thomas; in a situation where children 
would be left with the impression that Justice Thomas was being offered 
as a role model and that they should pattern their lives after him?
  Prince George's County is predominantly a county made up, the schools 
are predominantly African-American children. The school where Justice 
Thomas was speaking was composed primarily of African-American 
children. Kenneth Johnson, the school board member, was saying that 
African-American children should not be led to believe that Justice 
Thomas was a role model; that that would be really a slap in the face, 
considering the kinds of rulings that Justice Thomas has made, the kind 
of record Justice Thomas made before he became a Supreme Court justice, 
and the controversy which presently surrounds Justice Thomas and the 
decisions that he is making.
  What does this have to do with church burnings and what does it have 
to do with Supreme Court decisions? Well, Supreme Court decisions 
relating to the Voting Rights Act are probably Justice Thomas's most 
controversial decisions.
  The Voting Rights Act is an act which probably makes more sense than 
any other effort ever undertaken to remedy the situation caused by 232 
years of American slavery. Two hundred thirty-two years of American 
slavery was a most criminal enterprise. Probably nowhere in the history 
of the world have we had a situation like those 232 years of American 
slavery.
  We are very critical of Germany in that the current practices of 
Germany seek to minimize what happened in the Nazi era; that Germans do 
not rush to discuss what happened in the Nazi era. They do not rush to 
discuss the holocaust and what happened to 6 million Jews. They do not 
rush to discuss what happened to people with disabilities and what they 
did to gypsies and other people they labeled as political undesirables. 
They do not rush to talk about that and they do not rush to teach about 
that.
  They have been criticized, and yet American slavery is far more 
ancient than the recent history of the Nazi era. The Third Reich took 
place in the 1930's and 1940's.

                              {time}  2030

  Hitler was defeated in 1945. But the Civil War ended in 1865, and the 
Civil War was a war to end slavery. A lot of people call it different 
things. One of the problems they are trying to teach history nowadays 
is the fact that people do not want to face up to the fact that the 
Civil War was a war to end slavery.
  The Civil War ended a cruel and inhuman set of circumstances. It 
ended 235 years of forced labor. It ended 235 years of the destruction 
of human beings. All of that is part of what we wrestle with when we 
try to set a new curriculum for the teaching of history. We had a lot 
of controversy in trying to establish a new curriculum for the teaching 
of history, especially American history. I sit on the Committee on 
Economic and Education Opportunities. I know that for some time now 
that the effort has been going forward to develop standardized 
curricula in various areas that were almost standardized so that you 
could compare the teaching from one State to another and then we could 
have a curriculum where we have a body of knowledge and we can expect 
all Americans to know.
  Immediately there was agreement on a curriculum, a national 
standardized curriculum for the teaching of science. Math also, there 
was no great controversy over the teaching the math. I even think the 
arts came up with a curriculum that was pretty much accepted across the 
country, although it was not part of the official process. But when it 
came to the teaching of history, a great deal of controversy has 
resulted.
  One of the reasons is that history has to deal with what is right and 
what is wrong. History has to deal with treading on people's holy 
ground in terms of what it is that they certify as being legitimate 
actions taken by their ancestors. So American history with its 
controversial problems with the Native Americans and what happened to 
them, American history with its very controversial problems related to 
235 years of slavery presents us with a problem.
  The problem manifests itself immediately in a current event related 
to how shall you handle current events as related to decisions of the 
Supreme Court. How should you handle current events as related to a 
controversial Supreme Court Justice who is making decisions which 
directly impact in a negative way on African American people. How 
should you handle the invitation to that Supreme Court Justice to come 
to speak to an African American school when he has made several 
decisions since he arrived on the court which directly move African 
American people in this country backwards from the forward progress 
that was being made over the last 10 years. How shall you handle a 
betrayal of Justice Thomas.

  What does it have to do with burning black churches? There is an 
atmosphere that has been established in the last 5 or 6 years, it has 
been growing, escalating, an atmosphere of hate, an atmosphere of 
racism, coming in many different forms and directions. Some of that 
racism has come directly from the Supreme Court. Nobody has stepped 
forward to point a finger at the Supreme Court and said that this is a 
racist majority, that these decisions are racist. It is difficult to 
say that, when a black man is sitting there, when Clarence Thomas is 
sitting there, it is difficult to call it the way it is, that these 
decisions are racist with respect to affirmative action, setasides, 
school integration, and with respect to the Voting Rights Act.

[[Page H6494]]

  Nobody has challenged the fact that the Voting Rights Act decisions 
and the other decisions related to segregation and discrimination 
remedies, remedies that are being attempted to take care of, to 
compensate for years of discrimination and years of segregation. Nobody 
has challenged the court's reasoning and the fact that the court seems 
to be hell bent on ignoring the intent of the law. The court has 
repeatedly used the 14th amendment as the justification for its 
decisions that nothing which is race based, nothing which takes race 
into consideration is acceptable or constitutional because the 14th 
amendment is an amendment which calls for equal protection under the 
law. Everybody should be treated equal. So the court has distorted that 
equal protection intent of the 14th amendment to mean that we should 
have a color-blind America, and the 14th amendment's purpose is to 
establish a color-blind America.
  I think any sophomore who studies American history, certainly any law 
school student can look at the 14th amendment in the Constitution and 
clearly state that the 14th amendment, the 14th amendment was all about 
correcting the injustices caused by slavery. The clear intent of the 
law, the time in which it was established, makes it certain that it was 
there to deal with slavery. So because you have Justice Thomas there, 
the Supreme Court's logic, the Supreme Court's obvious refusal to 
interpret the Constitution in the context of what the framers intended, 
what the Congress intended at the time that it initiated the 14th 
amendment, what the States intended at the time they ratified the 14th 
amendment, the refusal to recognize that is a blatant omission that has 
to have a racist motivation.

  They are hell bent on destroying affirmative action programs, 
setaside programs, and they really want to strike down the entire 
Voting Rights Act. Recent decisions related to Texas, related to North 
Carolina are moving in that direction. Pretty soon you will have the 
Supreme Court probably saying the whole Voting Rights Act must go 
because it militates against a color-blind America, where race should 
not ever have been considered. The 14th amendment is used as the 
rationale for that, and the 14th amendment certainly does not do that. 
The 14th amendment is established, was created and conceived, executed 
within the context of trying to remedy the past wrongs of slavery.
  Mr. Speaker, there was a 13th amendment which freed the slaves. There 
was a 14th amendment which gave them, the salves, equal rights. There 
was a 15th amendment which gave the slaves the right to vote. If you 
want to look at the Constitution, you will see that the 14th amendment 
says much more than is usually quoted when the Supreme Court talks 
about equal protection. The 14th amendment really goes into other 
problems related to slavery. The 14th amendment talks about certain 
kinds of property arrangements and criticizes, and makes it clear that 
it is concerned with other aspects of correcting injustices done by 
slavery.
  So I want to come back to the Constitution and the 13th, 14th, and 
15th amendments. I also want to take a look at another reference to 
race within the Constitution, which came earlier. Article I of the 
Constitution refers to three-fifths of all of the persons, which 
everybody knows meant slaves, and that is still in our Constitution. 
Our Constitution is not without reference to slavery. Our Constitution 
clearly shows that we have a problem, America has a problem that should 
be remedied. Part of the remedy was undertaken in the 13th, 14th, and 
15th amendments to the Constitution after a terrible Civil War has been 
fought over the issue of slavery.
  The burnings of the black churches in the South relate to the fact 
that we still have this unfinished business that nobody wants to take 
care of. So from time to time we do things, we get into an era of 4 or 
5 years where we are going backwards on race relations. We are saying 
and doing things at high levels of government that encourage the people 
at lower levels who have problems out on the fringes of society who 
believe in violence, who have deep-seated hatreds and prejudices that 
they cannot control. They get out of hand because they hear a message 
coming from the top that we want to roll back the clock and deal with 
these people in a different manner. It happened in Hitler Germany. It 
happens from time to time in this society.

  Mr. Speaker, the best remedy for it of course is what happened today. 
That all the leadership, Republican, Democrats, the Speaker, the 
Democratic minority leader, everybody moved in immediately to try to 
send another message about the violence that is occurring.
  Immediately we want to make certain that they understand that we are 
not in favor of those kinds of actions. On the other hand, we are 
undertaking from day-to-day activities which send a different message. 
When you have extreme budget cuts and those budget cuts fall primarily 
on the poorest people in our society and 60 to 70 percent of the 
poorest people in our society happen to be the descendants of slaves, 
they happen to be African Americans, I mean 60 to 70 percent of the 
descendants of slaves happen to be poor. African Americans are in that 
category, living in large cities. The hostility toward large cities is 
clearly manifest by the kind of legislation that has been promulgated 
by the Congress over the past 10 years, hostility toward the cities 
where we are taking away resources, destroying programs that help the 
populations in the city, the urban population from transportation 
programs to programs for housing, you name it.
  Clearly everything that benefits people in the cities has been dealt 
with in a very negative way over the last 10 years. So these kinds of 
policies economic policies, budget policies, coupled with attacks on 
affirmative action, attacks on the Voting Rights Act, attacks on set-
asides, when you couple them all together, it sends a message that we 
really do not want to deal with atoning for the terrible sins of 
slavery. We do not want to deal with trying to compensate for 235 years 
of forced labor, brutality, murder, rape. We do not want to deal with 
that.

  I do not want to be misunderstood that I do not appreciate and am not 
grateful for the action taken today. I certainly think we acted in the 
most noble way in dealing with the burning of black churches in a 
forceful piece of legislation today. I agree wholeheartedly with the 
statement made by Democratic leader Gephardt last week when he called 
upon the Speaker to take immediate action to vote on a resolution 
condemning the burning of African American churches throughout the 
South.
  Mr. Gephardt stated that we are here today, quoting from his 
statement of last Wednesday, June 12, we are here today for a very 
simple reason. There is no criminal act, no criminal act more cowardly, 
more outrageous, more offensive than the burning of places of worship. 
When these acts are motivated by racial hatred, the offense is even 
greater. We believe that the U.S. Congress has an obligation to condemn 
the recent rash of church fires and then to impose tougher laws to 
crack down on the people who perpetuate these crimes.
  We are asking Speaker Gingrich to schedule an immediate vote on a 
resolution condemning the burnings of African American churches 
throughout the South. The American people should know that their 
Representatives are united against such baseless acts and are willing 
to do everything in their power to prevent and punish them. The next 
step is passing the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, to make it 
much easier to prosecute and punish those who burn, desecrate or damage 
religious property. We believe this can be done on a bipartisan basis. 
When these kinds of crimes occur, it is not just the churchgoers who 
suffer; it is our conscience as a Nation. The right to worship in 
freedom and safety regardless of race, religious faith or ethnic origin 
is the very foundation of our country. We pledge to do everything in 
our power to protect that right for all Americans at all times.
  I include Mr. Gephardt's full statement for the Record:

 Statement by House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt Urging House 
                  Resolution Condemning Church-Burning

       ``We're here today for a very simple reason: there is no 
     criminal act more cowardly, more outrageous, more offensive 
     than the burning of places of worship. When these acts are 
     motivated by racial hated, the offense is even greater.
       ``We believe the United States Congress has an obligation 
     to condemn the recent rash

[[Page H6495]]

     of church fires, and then to impose tougher laws to crack 
     down on the people who perpetrate these crimes.
       ``We're asking Speaker Gingrich to schedule an immediate 
     vote on a resolution condemning the burning of African-
     American churches throughout the South. The American people 
     should know that their representatives are united against 
     such baseless acts, and are willing to do everything in their 
     power to prevent and punish them.
       ``The next step is passing the Church Arson Prevention Act 
     of 1996--to make it much easier to prosecute and punish those 
     who burn, desecrate, or damage religious property. We believe 
     this can be done on a bipartisan basis.
       ``When these kinds of crimes occur, it is not just the 
     church-goers who suffer--it is our conscience as a nation. 
     The right to worship in freedom and safety--regardless of 
     race, religious faith, or ethnic origin--is the very 
     foundation of our country. We pledge to do everything in our 
     power to protect that right for all Americans, at all 
     times.''

  I think that we did it today. We passed that piece of legislation, 
the Church Arson Prevention Act. It may be interesting to note a few 
facts about the church burnings. More than 30 black churches in eight 
States from Louisiana to Virginia have been burned in the past 18 
months. That is a very important fact. It has been escalating in the 
last 2 months, but now more than 30 black churches in eight southern 
States have been burned.
  The largest percentage of those burnings have taken place in South 
Carolina. South Carolina, I will mention later, is a special State in 
terms of the kind of discussion that I am putting forth about American 
history and the need to confront the issue of slavery and what the 
impact of slavery has been on our Nation and what the consequences of 
slavery have been on the African-American population. The State of 
South Carolina still flies the Confederate flag above its capitol. It 
has something to answer. It has some important questions to answer. 
What does it do to have the flag, the Confederate flag flying over the 
capitol, which is the capitol of South Carolina for all the people of 
South Carolina, including the descendants of slaves?
  Another fact that we ought to consider is that almost all those 
arrested so far, there have been churches burned and there have been no 
people arrested. They have not caught any suspects or perpetrators, but 
those who have been arrested have been young white men. They have been 
typically members of hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan 
nation and the skinheads.

                              {time}  2045

  These are facts that are very important. There are people out there 
on the fringes of society who have these deep seated hatreds, 
prejudices, and who believe in violence, and they are acting out at 
this time, and I say the reason that they are acting out is something 
that we should look at very closely. We should not just be content to 
pass an act today which is going to deal with what is happening right 
now which will contain them. That is important, to send them a message 
we are not going to tolerate, they do not have any sympathy in high 
places. We also ought to look behind the causes and understand what is 
going on in order to prevent a spread, an escalation, of these kinds of 
activities out there with respect to the acting out of race hatreds and 
prejudices.
  Another factor is that experts say that a volatile mix of polarizing 
social and economic events, pitting citizens against government and 
white against black, has exploded in a kind of domestic terrorism that 
has left these churches burning across the South polarizing social and 
economic events and political events. The fact that South Carolina has 
had a great debate over the removal of a Confederate flag, the fact 
that there are economic tensions in that part of the country as well as 
most of the country because of the fact that jobs are leaving and there 
are fears of losing jobs and all kinds of economic fears of this 
generation about what is going to happen to their children; those are 
all parts of these events that end up pitting citizens against citizens 
and citizens against government, and added to that is a message being 
sent that in particular there is an evil related to the Voting Rights 
Act, there is an evil related to the set-aside programs to affirmative 
action. The messages are being sent that these things are part of a 
problem and certain people are being encouraged to focus on black 
churches as being the citadels of the movement or the institution which 
holds together black communities. When you strike at black churches, 
you are striking at the heart of the black community.

  One other factor that ought to be pointed out is that since early 
1995 the ATF has probed 25 suspicious fires at mostly white churches. 
In addition to predominantly black churches or all black churches, 
there have been 25 suspicious fires of mostly white churches.
  Now the word ``mostly'' is the one you look at closely. A mostly 
white church means that it is a white church that has black members 
also. It means that it is a white church that was predominantly white 
or almost all white before that has admitted black parishioners or 
black members to the congregation. Nothing is hated more in the South 
by the racists and by the people who are capable of this kind of 
activity than integration. So a mostly white church is a church that 
has admitted black members. That is definitely going to be a target; 
they are in the same category as the black churches as far as being 
targets of hatred. So it is the same phenomena.
  I think that if you are going to get to the heart of what is 
happening and not have it continue to escalate, you have to go back and 
take a look at the history of the South, the history of this Nation and 
what is going on with respect to race relations. One of the irritants 
that keeps occurring with respect to race relations in this country is 
favorable of the perception that favorable treatment of African-
Americans, favorable treatment of the descendants of slaves, is wrong. 
This upsets people and angers them a great deal. It is wrong to have 
affirmative action, it is wrong to have set-asides, the rewarding of 
contracts, it is wrong to have a Voting Rights Act which, in my 
opinion, is a very conservative political remedy for a very clear 
problem that was identified for decades.
  The Voting Rights Act was fashioned as a result of trying to deal 
with the fact that for more than a hundred years people of African-
American descent, descendants of slaves, were not allowed to vote in 
the south. All kinds of tricks were used. We have to wage all kinds of 
legal battles in the courts, we have to have sit-ins and marches and 
demonstrations, and on and on it went for a long time before the simple 
matter of allowing a black person to go to a poll and vote could be 
accomplished, and the Voting Rights Act was an attempt to remedy the 
fact that as a result of that denial to vote, a right to vote, you had 
circumstances that generated a situation where there was no adequate 
representation by blacks in government at any level. At city levels and 
State levels and at the Federal level you had grossly inadequate 
representation as a result of all of these injustices related to voting 
rights that have been perpetrated for more than a hundred years. The 
Voting Rights Act was to correct that.
  So the Voting Rights Act is part of the remedies that are necessary 
to deal with what has happened in American history with respect to 
slavery.
  When we teach history to children in schools like the one that 
Clarence Thomas visited, the school that had an awards night and 
invited Justice Thomas; when you teach history to those children, how 
do you deal with the fact that most of the history books do not discuss 
this 235 years of slavery and the implications of having a population 
enslaved for 235 years? Most of the history books do not talk about 
slave labor and the fact that slaves had to work for nothing. Most of 
the history books do not talk about the fact that for 235 years the 
slaves were prevented from acquiring assets.
  They were prevented from acquiring property. For 235 years one 
generation had nothing to pass on to another generation. Most of the 
history books do not talk about that. Most of the history books do not 
want to deal with the economic consequences of 235 years of slavery.
  A youngster who is black in a school with whites, whites who have a 
history of having had assets, property handed down from one generation 
to another, most people in America who have assets, overwhelming 
majority of people who have assets, have property in the form of homes 
or real estate that was handed down from one generation to another or 
was sponsored and financed

[[Page H6496]]

by the older generation. Couples have parents who either give or loan 
them the money for the mortgage. They have situations where furniture 
and property, stocks and bonds, various assets are passed down from one 
generation to another. If you have 235 years where you have nothing, 
where you are not allowed to own anything, you do not have any 
property, you are forced to work for nothing, then you start 235 years 
behind, and every black youngster in a school ought to know that your 
self-esteem and your sense of self-worth should not be impacted, should 
not be affected without taking that into consideration. You cannot 
compare yourself with your peers who have the benefits of all of this 
hand-down from one generation to another, who had the benefit of what 
goes along with assets and property and wealth.
  There is a correlation which is clear, and nobody questions it, 
between assets, wealth, and education. The people who have more income 
get better education. There are recent studies that confirm the 
relationship between income and achievement regardless of race. A lot 
of statements have been made about the fact that middle class black 
youngsters do not achieve in the same way that middle class white 
youngsters achieve. Well, when you study middle class and you define it 
more closely in terms of real income, and when you make the comparisons 
by income and you compare the income on the basis of what was the 
income on a steady basis throughout the life of a child, was it there 
when they were young and most formative? Did they lose the income as 
they got older? There is a study which has been done which has been 
very useful in this respect, and they give the big lie to the theory 
that income does not impact on all groups regardless of race, religion 
or color, including African American children. They are as susceptible 
to the impact of income. When they have the income in black families, 
they behave in just the same way as children in white families.

  There is a study that recently was concluded by Greg Duncan at 
Northwestern University National Institute of Childhood Health and 
Human Development which talked about, which is entitled, Family and 
Child Well-being Research Network, and it is part of the effort of 
family and child well-being research network, and their conclusions are 
that when you compare the income and you study it closely and you see 
that in the most formative years of life children have a certain 
income, those white children and black children who have the same 
income in the formative years of life, early years of schooling, they 
preform in much the same way regardless of race as they grow older. 
When you have youngsters who lose, who do not have the income that 
supports a certain level of family life at the early ages, and they 
later acquire it when they get into high school, then you do have a 
problem. The change is quite significant. Those whose families had 
inadequate income when they were in early education situations and 
later acquired it when they went to high school, they do not perform as 
well. The income is the variable. It is the same among whites who do 
not have the right income level that supports the right kind of 
nurturing environment at early ages. The same problem results in white 
families and with the white children as it does with the African 
American children.
  Studies like these are sort of widely introduced into the academic 
stream, and there is not much said about it. There was a book put out 
called the Bell Curve, which was greatly celebrated, and the Bell 
Curve was out to demonstrate what scientists have generally disproven 
over the years, that there is definitely a correlation between IQ and 
achievement and race, and that black people, people of African decent, 
are inferior with respect to achievement and with respect to IQ. These 
studies will show you differently and show you that there is a factor 
of income and a factor of nurturing that goes with income and a factor 
of educational level that goes with income that has a great impact on 
how children achieve and on their IQ.

  So, if you have a situation where for 232 years nothing was passed 
down, for 232 years there was no property, income was at a measly 
level, then the recent prosperity of African Americans in the middle 
class is not enough because they do not come from a tradition that was 
handed down that was nurtured where there was books, where there was 
wisdom passed all around the table by people who were already educated. 
There is a whole culture that comes with income at a certain level, and 
the culture was not there to nurture educational achievement and to 
nurture IQ.
  So the youngster, the child, who is African American in a public 
school needs to know that there is a whole history back there you have 
no control over. There is a whole history where you were deprived of 
the opportunity to pass on assets and property, and for that reason, 
for that reason, it is not a great shame for the society to develop 
programs which are going to seek to compensate for those 232 years and 
the tradition that they failed to hand down for those 232 years and the 
property that they fail to hand down. Affirmative action compensatory 
education programs become vital if you are going to try to remedy the 
evils of 232 years.
  Justice Clarence Thomas says no. All of a sudden, although he is the 
beneficiary of compensatory programs, all of a sudden they are programs 
that might make people too reliant or too dependent. He has benefited 
in many ways, but now he joins with a group of racists on the Supreme 
Court to interpret the 14th amendment to mean that you cannot take race 
into consideration in trying to foster programs which are seeking to 
remedy and to compensate for and to counteract 232 years of slavery, 
and 100 years after that, by the way, of very intensive pressure.
  There is an article that appeared in the Washington Post this past 
Sunday by Lynn Cooper, and that article talked about slavery that 
existed long after the Civil War, after the Emancipation Proclamation 
and after the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, slavery that was 
permitted by governments in the South, slavery that never was 
sufficiently challenged by the National Government, the Federal 
Government. He talks in great detail. It is a long article this past 
Sunday, June 16, in the Washington Post Sunday Style section by Lynn 
Cooper. It gives concrete examples of what happened as the share 
cropper system and the peon system and various other systems developed, 
which endured for almost 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

                              {time}  2100

  So all of these things become a part of what history should teach, 
and if it fails to teach, it denies a basic ingredient to the public 
discourse and the public dialogue which one day might get it all 
straight and be able to deal in a more intelligent way and a more 
sympathetic way and a way which is more in the national interest and 
than we are presently doing.
  If you do not look at history and acknowledge the truths of history, 
you are going to make decisions which are going to be distorted and 
continue to warp the public discourse and the public decision-making 
process. We are in that period now. We are right now in a period where 
the Voting Rights Act is about to be struck down, and yet that is 
probably the one piece of legislation which is most crucial to the 
correction of the 235 years of criminal slavery and the aftermath of 
that slavery.
  The Voting Rights Act does put, not only in the Congress but in the 
State legislatures and in the local councils and local governments, put 
in place people who represent the descendents of slaves and who will be 
able to take action on an ongoing basis to have a point of view which 
is going to help correct some of the numerous problems that still exist 
in our society as a result of those 235 years of slavery.
  The church burnings are there because at the top the Supreme Court is 
saying, blacks, you have been too arrogant. Blacks, you have demanded 
too much. Blacks, you do not deserve special treatment. Blacks, you are 
taking away from other people. The Supreme Court sends down that 
message.
  The Congress of the United States says, blacks, you do not deserve to 
have programs which provide aid to poor people. A large percentage of 
your people are poor, but that is a crime that you have committed, 
being poor. Being poor has nothing to do with 235 years of slavery. 
Being poor has nothing to do with schools that for a long time were not 
equal. They were separate but not equal, schools that right

[[Page H6497]]

now are still in horrible shape in our urban centers, where most black 
youngsters go to school All this has nothing to do with your condition. 
All this has nothing to do with the crime rate. All this has nothing to 
do with the high rate of blacks on welfare. Let us dismiss all of this. 
Let us not accept it as being there. It is not real.
  In South Africa they have a truth commission. The truth commission 
has been appointed, not to get revenge, and not even to punish many 
people who are still living who committed gross and obvious crimes 
during the period when apartheid existed. They just want to tell the 
truth. They want to get it out. Nobody is going to be punished in many 
instances, but just tell the truth as to what is happening with the 
police and oppression, what is happening when people were put off their 
land by trickery and by various devices that were developed by the 
government. Tell the truth, no vengeance.
  I said before on a couple of occasions here, especially in connection 
with Haiti, that reconciliation is more important than justice. 
Reconciliation sometimes is the only thing possible. You cannot get 
justice. In Haiti, they do not even have the resources to build jails 
and prisons for all the people who murdered people over a 3-year period 
after President Aristide was kicked out of Haiti. Five thousand people 
were killed, 5,000 people brutally murdered. Other people were 
tortured. All kinds of things happened.
  But if they put their meager resources to work building prisons, 
trying to set up a court system, and paying attention only to getting 
justice, they would have nothing left over to build an economic system, 
to develop jobs and do other kinds of things that have to be done. They 
have to give up. There will be no justice. Reconciliation is what 
President Aristide is forced to preach.

  It probably makes a lot of sense. The deep philosophy of 
Christianity, that vengeance belongs to God and turning the other 
cheek, a lot of things that have been ridiculed about the Christian 
religion, makes a lot of sense in the context where if you are in a 
situation where you do not have the capacity to get justice, then 
certainly life must go on and reconciliation becomes the only 
possibility.
  I think Abraham Lincoln when he said malice towards none understood 
that very clearly; that to seek justice would have led to more chaos, 
guerrilla warfare, all kinds of confusion, but the malice towards none, 
and the fact that the Congress in the next 10 years proceeded to 
absolve all of the people who rebelled against the central government 
from any crimes, to give back property that had been threatened, all 
kinds of things were done to smooth it all out, going to an extreme. 
The malice towards none led to wiping out, taking a position of 
amnesia, that there was no crime committed. There were no crimes, there 
are no victims.
  The 40 acres and a mule was promised by the Freedmens Bureau. The 
Freedmens Bureau was a social program, the very first social program 
the Federal Government ever financed. It probably had the shortest 
life, also. It endured for about 10 years a little less than 10 years. 
But the Freedmens Bureau was attached to the Union Army, and they at 
one point started experiments where slaves were given 40 acres and a 
mule in order to farm the land that had been owned by the Confederates, 
people who supported the Confederacy. That was an extensive measure 
that probably went to the extreme.
  President Johnson wiped all that out with a decree, and Congress 
later on gave back all the lands. They went from one extreme of taking 
everything away from the southern plantation owners to giving 
everything back to them and making no provision for the slaves who had 
labored for 235 years for no compensation. So we went from one extreme 
to another, and then we went into a period of amnesia, wiping it all 
out and acting as if it does not exist, so much so that when the 
Confederate flag is flown now, people do not understand why the 
victims, the slaves or the descendants of slaves, should be upset in 
South Carolina.
  Why should they care about the Confederate flag being flown? After 
all, brave men died. We do not want to trample on memories and deeds of 
the brave men who died under that flag, but we do not think you are 
acknowledging history properly if you insist those brave men's flag 
must fly over the State Capitol and be the flag that has to be honored 
by the victims who, in large numbers their descendants still exist.
  In fact, South Carolina, the State where you have the most church 
burnings, also happens to be the State that had the largest slave 
population. There is a book called Slavery and Social Death by Orlando 
Patterson which breaks out the populations for slaves in this country 
during certain periods when they were counting, and it talks about the 
fact that each State had a certain percentage of the population that 
was a slave percentage.
  There were times in America where certain States had more slaves than 
other States, and South Carolina probably was in the worst shape. South 
Carolina is the State which has the most church burnings. South 
Carolina is the State which has a Confederate flag flying. There has 
been a lot of controversy about it. The oppressive previous government 
of South Carolina before the Civil War, everybody has amnesia about 
that, does not want to acknowledge that. They were heroes, the flag 
must be flown.

  In 1708, 57 percent of the population of South Carolina were slaves, 
according to the records that were offered in this very thorough book 
called ``Slavery and Social Death'' by Orlando Patterson, published in 
1982 by Harvard University Press. If you would like to get it, it is in 
the Library of Congress, and I am sure it is in other libraries.
  South Carolina in 1708 had 57 percent of its population that were 
slaves. In 1720, 64 percent of the population of South Carolina was 
slaves. In 1830, they still had 54 percent of the population who were 
slaves. In 1860, 57 percent of the population were slaves. These are 
official counts that the States themselves used, because each State 
benefited by properly counting its slaves, or sometimes maybe 
overcounting them, but they were willing to offer these figures, and 
they were verified to some extent by national census takers. In 1860, 5 
years before the end of the Civil War, 57 percent of the people of 
South Carolina were slaves. More slaves existed there than other 
people.
  This is significant because if we look at the other Southern States 
we find similar patterns where large percentages, and at one point 
Virginia had as much as 45 percent of the population who were slaves. 
Mississippi had 55 percent in 1810, and Louisiana had 51 percent in 
1830; you know, populations of slaves greater than the other people, 
and yet all of these victims and their descendants are sort of not to 
be regarded in the present situation which exists where we want to 
ignore and forget about the existence of slavery.
  What am I trying to say? It is kind of complicated, but what I am 
trying to say is that all these various items that I have talked about 
here relate. The burning of the black churches is a symptom of a 
disease that runs in the blood of America. Every now and then that 
disease breaks forth, and the boils and the canker sores show 
themselves. They will get worse if you do not take action.
  We took action today to start reversing that, but the disease has to 
be dealt with. We are not dealing with the disease when we have Supreme 
Court decisions which strike down the Voting Rights Act. We are not 
dealing with the disease when we attack affirmative action. We are not 
dealing with the disease when we go after set-asides for Federal 
contracts. We are not dealing with the disease when we have extremist 
budget cuts which cut programs that benefit the descendants of slaves 
who live in big cities on a regular basis. The hostility shown by the 
Congress and its policies are aimed at that population.
  We are not dealing with the disease in the blood of America. We are 
not dealing with the disease when we fail to teach history that at 
least tells the truth and states the facts so you would have a chance 
of getting at the truth. We are not dealing with the disease when we 
allow black children to accept a Supreme Court Justice like Clarence 
Thomas as a role model without challenging that. It was challenged, and 
that is part of what I want to talk about, because it all relates.
  When Justice Thomas was invited to speak to an awards ceremony at a 
school in Prince Georges County by a

[[Page H6498]]

teacher, a school board member, once he heard about it, it happened to 
be a school in the district that he represented, once he heard about 
it, he challenged it. He said, given the fact that this is a 
predominantly black district, these are children who are black, they 
ought to know more about Clarence Thomas and the kinds of decisions 
that he is making, and we ought to have a way to communicate that if he 
is going to come to the school. An awards ceremony where he comes and 
makes a presentation and nobody has a chance to talk about him or he 
talk and answer any questions, so forth, that is not the appropriate 
arena for having a controversial figure like Clarence Thomas come and 
interact with black children.

  I think this was a most appropriate challenge by Kenneth Johnson of 
the Prince Georges County Board of Education. I think Mr. Johnson was 
right in questioning. I do not think this was a matter of questioning 
free speech prerogatives of Mr. Thomas or the people who wanted to hear 
Mr. Thomas who were adults.
  However, we always apply free speech differently when we are dealing 
with children. We do not allow free speech to predominate on our 
airways or in any arena, books. Nowhere do we say that free speech 
should be the order of the day when we are dealing with children. We 
make exceptions for children. If children should not see pornographic 
films, if children should not read pornographic passages in books, if 
children ought to be protected from pornography, if one of these days 
we are going to get around to properly protecting children from 
violence on the screen and violence in books and so forth, children are 
in a different category.
  We do not protect adults. It is pretty clear. The Supreme Court says 
you do not have a right to apply those same standards to adults but you 
do have a right for children. So children should be protected against 
political fraud. They should be protected against the situation where 
they are asked to accept someone as a role model when that person is 
taking actions which directly are detrimental to them and their parents 
and to future generations.
  How do you handle that? I think Mr. Thomas should clearly have been 
allowed to come to speak once he had been invited, but I think that the 
school board and the people responsible should have taken the 
responsibility of setting up an alternative forum of supporting Mr. 
Johnson and having it known exactly what Mr. Johnson was concerned 
about.
  There is the bigger issue of how is Mr. Thomas going to be handled in 
the curriculum in the future. He can be handled in one way in the 
curriculum, and standardized curriculum across the whole country. You 
can handle it straight factually: He is a conservative, he is a man who 
turned his back on affirmative action that helped him, he is a man who 
is very hostile to policies and programs that promote opportunities for 
his own people, opportunities that are designed to correct the past 
injustices of slavery and discrimination and oppression. You could say 
factually that is the case.
  But there should be an addendum to that curriculum in areas where 
black children are being taught. There should be clearly an opportunity 
to have a greater discussion of what that means. There should be a 
clear way to discuss the fact that large percentages of the black 
population have branded Justice Clarence Thomas as a traitor to his own 
people.
  What does it mean to be a traitor? Benedict Arnold was a traitor. 
Everybody accepts that. Benedict Arnold was a traitor. I do not think 
that necessarily the British schoolchildren of that time would call 
Benedict Arnold a traitor. Benedict Arnold may be called a hero in 
England in the service of the king. Benedict Arnold might have been 
given some great justification for his actions. The king and the people 
who supported keeping the American colonies as part of the British 
Empire might have argued that Benedict Arnold was a champion of law and 
order, that the colonists had no right to rebel against the lawful 
government of England.
  They could argue that, and make a case for it, and make him a hero in 
the schools for the children of the British back in England. clearly he 
was a traitor here, because we had already taken another course. Right 
and wrong had been defined by the Declaration of Independence.

                               {time}  2115

  Thomas Jefferson talked about certain inalienable rights. He talked 
about self-evident truths. He did not deal with the fine points of 
English law. If he had continued to try to negotiate with the King and 
negotiate with the British, we would still probably be a colony of 
England. But he called upon higher powers and declared that there are 
some self-evident truths, that there are some inalienable rights. There 
is a right and a wrong.
  This Nation said when Abraham Lincoln was mourned and lifted up as 
one of the greatest Presidents of the United States, there is a right 
and a wrong. Abraham Lincoln who presided over the war against slavery, 
he represents the right. The whole civilized world looks to Abraham 
Lincoln as a person who was right in a controversy that some people 
want to still argue about. It was right to end slavery in America. It 
was right to go to war and have the bloodiest battle ever fought by 
Americans, fought on the soil of America, to get rid of that slavery.
  America would be in a very different position if two nations existed, 
one slave and one free, at the time Hitler came to power. We might have 
had on our very continent allies for the kind of philosophy that Hitler 
was advocating.
  All kinds of things could have happened if the rightness of Lincoln's 
position had not been enforced by a challenge to the Confederacy.
  There is a right and a wrong internationally. Lincoln is a great 
hero. The Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, the first Prime Minister 
after Communist rule was overthrown, visited the White House and Mrs. 
Bush, upon the occasion that the Congressional Black Caucus was 
visiting the White House, she explained that when he came into the room 
where Lincoln had stayed and where the Emancipation Proclamation was 
signed, he looked at the Emancipation Proclamation and he broke down in 
tears.
  Here is a man from Czechoslovakia, a man who had been under Communist 
rules, had been in prison, his great idol was Abraham Lincoln, and the 
Emancipation Proclamation, which was a Presidential Executive order 
that set the slaves free, brought him to tears immediately.
  So internationally, in the court of international morality and 
justice, Abraham Lincoln was right and the other folks were wrong. 
Slavery was wrong. We have made that decision. Our textbooks are to 
reflect it that way. We are to recognize that that is the national 
norm.
  If slavery was wrong, then remedies to correct the aftermath of 
slavery, remedies to correct the residue of the criminal actions of 
slavery, they have to have some kind of validity. The Voting Rights Act 
has to have validity. The Constitution has to have interpretation and 
must not be distorted by a racist Supreme Court that refuses to 
recognize that race in the Constitution is mentioned.
  We are mentioned several times, starting with article 1, where they 
talk about three-fifths of all other persons, they are clearly 
referring to slaves. Everybody knows the intent of the Constitution. 
Nobody has challenged the fact that three-fifths of all other persons 
means three-fifths, that each slave, male, should be counted as three-
fifths of a person when you are counting the population of America. And 
they correct that when they get to the 13th and 14th amendment where 
they set free the slaves in the 13th amendment.
  The 13th amendment states: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, 
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly 
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject 
to their jurisdiction. That is the 13th amendment.
  The 14th amendment, which is the subject of controversy, the 14th 
amendment which is being used by Sandra Day O'Connor and her colleagues 
on the Court as justification for calling for a colorblind America, the 
14th amendment has section 1, section 2, section 3, section 4, and 
section 5, and

[[Page H6499]]

I want to submit for the Record, just to have people reminded, the 
whole 14th amendment.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the whole 14th amendment.

                           Amendment XIV \1\

       Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United 
     States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens 
     of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No 
     State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
     privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; 
     nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or 
     property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person 
     within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified July 9, 1868.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
       Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the 
     several States according to their respective numbers, 
     counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding 
     Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election 
     for the choice of electors for President and Vice President 
     of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the 
     Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of 
     the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male 
     inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and 
     citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except 
     for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of 
     representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion 
     which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the 
     whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such 
     State.
       Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative 
     in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or 
     hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, 
     or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as 
     a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, 
     or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive 
     or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution 
     of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or 
     rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the 
     enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of 
     each House, remove such disability.
       Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United 
     States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for 
     payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing 
     insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But 
     neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay 
     any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or 
     rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the 
     loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, 
     obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
       Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by 
     appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

  Section 1 states:

       All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and 
     subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the 
     United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State 
     shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
     privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; 
     nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or 
     property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person 
     within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

  Who are they talking about particularly, specifically? The 13th 
amendment that came before freed the slaves, but the 14th amendment is 
talking specifically about slaves, or people who were just freed from 
slavery, and the 14th amendment is there primarily to deal with the 
descendants of slaves.
  To argue that it is there to promote a colorblind America is to 
distort the Constitution, to throw out any concern about what the 
Congress meant when they wrote this, what the States meant when they 
drafted it. We never do that on any other laws. We are always looking 
for the intent of the Framers, what the law says. All that is 
important. Why all of a sudden is it not important that the 14th 
amendment was drafted, written, ratified in response to correcting the 
ills of slavery, establishing the fact that these people who have just 
been set free shall also have equal right, equal protection under the 
law, these people are the people who were slaves and their descendants.
  Section 2, this is in the same 14th amendment. If you want to 
challenge my contention that the 14th amendment is about slavery and 
correcting the ills of slavery, take a look in section 2, section 3 and 
section 4. Take a look at what they say. They are talking about 
situations which are related to correcting the upheaval, the situation 
that resulted as a result of rebellion against the United States.
  In Section 2, I will not read it all, they state: ``But when the 
right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President 
and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, 
the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the 
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such 
State, being 21 years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in 
any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other 
crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the 
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the 
whole number'' except in rebellion, participation in rebellion.
  When the 14th amendment was written, they still had rebellion of the 
Confederacy on their mind. Section 2 makes it clear that they had that 
in their mind.
  I will read all of section 3:

       No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, 
     or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any 
     office, civil or military, under the United States, or under 
     any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member 
     of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a 
     member of any State legislature, or as an executive or 
     judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of 
     the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or 
     rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the 
     enemies thereof.

  They were concerned about the carryover and what was left over from 
the situation of the Civil War which was fought to end slavery.

       Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United 
     States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for 
     payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing 
     insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But 
     neither the United States nor any State shall assume or 
     pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection 
     or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for 
     the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, 
     obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

  The 14th amendment was not concerned and preoccupied with colorblind 
America. It was preoccupied with slavery, the Civil War, the aftermath 
of the Civil War, with dealing with people who had rebelled against the 
Federal Government. I offer this in the hope that somebody would go 
back and reread it, and especially the Supreme Court Justices who dwell 
on one section and refuse to accept the 14th amendment in its total 
context. It is distorted and twisted.
  Kenneth Johnson did a great service when he pointed out that Justice 
Thomas is a part of this process of distorting the 14th amendment in 
what results in a racist series of decisions by the Court to roll back 
the clock and end various constructive kinds of things that have gone 
forth as a result of interpreting the 14th amendment in the proper way 
and understanding that the 14th amendment was the chance to deal with 
the problem of slavery in the proper context.
   Mr. Speaker, I was going to also give an example of how a recent 
book by Daniel Gohagen called ``Hitler's Willing Executioners'' 
confirms the kind of situation I am talking about where if you fail to 
deal with underlying prejudices and hostilities in a society, it will 
blossom forth in a diseased way and sometimes it will get out of 
control. Certainly, if the central government and leaders of government 
condone it and encourage it, it gets out of control.
  I would like to end my remarks by saying, by taking actions against 
the church burnings in a forceful way today, we have shown that the 
leaders of this central government will take firm action against such 
activities and elementary and rudimentary efforts have been taken to 
stamp out this disease. We need to go further and try to get to the 
root causes.

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