[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 13, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S729-S730]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2002 BY COMMEMORATING AND CONTINUING 
                  THE WORK OF GREAT AFRICAN-AMERICANS

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, Willie Morris was one of the great under-
recognized American writers of the 20th century. He grew up in Yazoo 
City, MS--population 12,000--where he learned to tell stories by 
listening to old Black men who sat in the shade and whittled. He said 
their eye for detail helped him to see things he otherwise would have 
missed. At 34, Willie Morris became the youngest-ever editor of 
America's oldest magazine, ``Harper's Weekly.'' He wrote candidly about 
race long before most other white writers.
  Three years ago, Willie Morris died at the age of 64, leaving behind 
19 books, many of them best-sellers. Like all great writers, a part of 
Willie Morris continues to live on in his words. But there is another 
part of him that lives on as well. You see, before he died, Willie 
Morris decided to donate his eyes in order to give someone else a 
chance to see. As it turned out, his corneas went to two different men, 
neither of whom he had ever met. One was black, one was white. His 
friends say he would have loved the irony of his gift: that a man who 
helped us see the world a little more clearly during his life is still 
helping people see after his death.
  America has changed since Willie Morris was a boy listening to the 
stories of those old men. We no longer accept legal discrimination. We 
no longer permit poll taxes to bar African-Americans from voting. We no 
longer tolerate ``separate but equal'' schools or water fountains or 
lunch counters. We have made considerable progress--due, in large part, 
to courageous African-American leaders including Martin Luther King, 
Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, and John Lewis. During Black History 
Month, we honor those leaders and all of the other 
extraordinary African-Americans who have contributed so greatly to our 
nation--heroes like Crispus Attucks, who died at the Boston Massacre; 
Salem Poor, who fought at Bunker Hill and survived that brutal winter 
at Valley Forge; Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad ``conductor'' 
who rescued hundreds of people from slavery, served during the Civil 
War as a Union cook, spy, scout and nurse and was buried with full 
military honors.

  We honor the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-Americans ever to fly 
combat aircraft and one of the most decorated fighter squadrons in our 
nation's history, who fought Nazism in Europe--and racism when they 
returned home; and Secretary of State Colin Powell, the first African-
American to serve as Chairman of America's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
  We honor great scientists, including George Washington Carver and 
Benjamin Banneker, the mathematician and astronomer and the first 
African-American to receive a Presidential appointment--from Thomas 
Jefferson. We also honor great orators and champions of human rights, 
including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Barbara Jordan; great 
educators, such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington; and 
great artists, including Marian Anderson, the first African-American 
soloist to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Zora Neale 
Hurston, the novelist and Langston Hughes, ``the poet laureate of 
Harlem.''
  This month, as the world watches the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, 
we also honor extraordinary earlier Olympians like Jesse Owens, who 
shattered the myth of Aryan supremacy by winning four gold medals at 
the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; and Wilma Rudolph, the first African-
American woman to win three Olympic gold medals, in 1960. We also honor 
other great athletes including Jackie Robinson, the first African-
American to play Major League baseball; and Arthur Ashe, champion of 
tennis and human rights.
  We remember exceptional leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois, one of the 
founders of the NAACP; A. Philip Randolph, the former vice president of 
the AFL-CIO and founder of the first African-American trade union; and 
Ralph Bunche, diplomat, Under Secretary General of the U.N., and the 
first Black person from any nation ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. 
And we honor the countless other African-Americans who changed our 
nation for the better simply by having the courage to say no to 
indignity and injustice in their own lives.

  The stories of African Americans are the missing chapter in America's 
history books. If we don't know them, we cannot truly know ourselves.
  But it's not enough just to celebrate their work. Especially this 
year, we must continue their work.
  To the terrorists who attacked us on September 11, the America Martin 
Luther King described--an America built on equality, justice, freedom 
and human dignity for every person--is not a dream. It is a nightmare. 
By attacking us, the terrorists thought they could destroy our dream. 
But they were wrong. Instead of turning on each other in the wake of 
the attacks, as the terrorists had expected, Americans turned to each 
other. We came together in ways that most of us had never seen in our 
lifetimes. We were truly one people, indivisible.
  Those of us who work in this building, and people all over the world 
who look to this Capitol as a symbol of democracy, are incredibly 
fortunate that another chapter in African-American history was written 
last fall. Just five days before September 11, former Army Major 
General Al Lenhardt became this Senate's Sergeant at Arms, the first 
African-American ever to serve as an elected officer in either the 
House or the Senate. I know I speak for all of us when I say how 
grateful we are to him for seeing us safely through September 11 and 
the anthrax attack.
  We are also proud of our men and women in uniform, who are now 
bringing justice to the killers of September 11. What they are doing is 
right and necessary. But it is not the only way we can honor the nearly 
3,000 innocents who died in New York, at the Pentagon and in western 
Pennsylvania. We can defy the killers right here at home--by keeping 
Martin Luther King's dream alive, and strengthening the democracy the 
terrorists sought to destroy.
  We can start this month by strengthening our election system so that 
we never again experience an election like we did in 2000, when 
millions of votes went uncounted, especially those of African-
Americans. We have an extraordinary opportunity. Senators Dodd, 
McConnell and Bond have given us a good, truly bipartisan election 
reform bill that requires states to meet uniform, nondiscriminatory 
voting standards, and provides the resources they need to do so. That 
bill is on the Senate floor now. I hope we will pass it this week with 
overwhelming support. If we are a democracy in fact as well as in name, 
the right to vote and to have that vote count must not be compromised.

[[Page S730]]

  The income gap between Blacks and whites in America is narrower today 
than it has ever been. But it is still too wide. We can do better. Last 
week, we voted to provide an additional 13 weeks of benefits to laid-
off workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits.
  I hope we can still find a way to expand unemployment insurance 
coverage to part-time workers and recent hires--a disproportionate 
number of whom are African-American--and to help all laid-off workers 
maintain their health benefits.
  Let's also raise the minimum wage. It's been five years since the 
last increase. The purchasing power of the minimum wage is now the 
lowest it's been in more than 30 years. And a full-time minimum wage 
income won't get you over the poverty line. We can do better.
  Nothing has more power than education to move us from separate to 
equal. Yet today, nearly half-a-century after Brown v. Board of 
Education, mst minority students still attend schools that are 
predominantly minority. Their class sizes, on average, are larger, 
their books are older, their lessons are less challenging and their 
teachers have less training in the subjects they teach. Last year, we 
passed a promising, bipartisan school reform act. This year, let's work 
togther to make sure that ``Leave No Child Behind'' is a promise kept, 
not a dream deferred. Our goal should be to make sure that every child 
in America comes to school ready to learn and leaves school ready to 
succeed.
  If we learned anything from the terrible ordeal of September 11, it 
is that we cannot tolerate acts of hatred and discrimination. Make no 
mistake about it: Chaining a man to the back of a pickup truck and 
dragging him to his death for no reason other than the color of his 
skin is an act of terrorism. And while James' Byrd's death may be the 
best-known racially motivated hate crime in recent years, it is not the 
only such crime. A hate crime scars this country every hour and 10 
minutes of every day, 365 days a year. In the last Congress, the Senate 
passed a bipartisan bill strengthening federal protections against hate 
crimes only to see it die in conference with the House. We need to pass 
it again this year. And this time, let's make sure it becomes law. W 
came together on September 11. If we are to stay together, we must 
stand against every form of bigotry and hatred.
  Finally, we know that protecting rights in law is only half the 
battle. We also need a judiciary that protects our rights in court. As 
Senators, we have a special obligation to ensure that the men and women 
who are nominated for lifetime positions on the federal bench or the 
Supreme Court will protect the basic rights for which so many 
Americans, from Crispus Attucks on down through the years, have given 
their lives. Let us honor that obligation this month and every month we 
are privileged to be here.
  We don't need Willie Morris' eyes to see how far America has come on 
civil rights since he was a boy. We also don't need Willie Morris' eyes 
to see that there is still a gap between the America we are and the 
America we can be. We all see those things. Our challenge today is to 
envision ways to close that gap, and then to transform that vision into 
law. In doing that, we will honor African-Americans and every American 
of every race and creed who died on September 11.
  I yield the floor.

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