[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 18 (Wednesday, February 27, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H620]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BLACK HISTORY MONTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Flake). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, in harmony with the theme that the 1-hour 
presentation on Black History Month has set forth, is there a color 
line, is there racism, emphatically, yes, there is. This does not 
prevent us from noting the positive achievements that have taken place 
and the progress that has been made. We are quite pleased that there 
are now 39 Members of the House of Representatives who are African 
Americans. We have gotten back what we lost certainly after the Civil 
War. There were some 30 representatives elected, some in the Senate as 
well as the House.
  All that was lost. Step by step we have seen gains wiped out over the 
years during reconstruction, and for about a hundred years before the 
civil rights movement under Martin Luther King we were steadily going 
backwards and every achievement that was accomplished was accomplished 
without the help of the mainstream population, just about every 
achievement. Many of the achievements were accomplished despite a great 
deal of hostility and animosity from the mainstream population.
  I sit on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and, of course, 
am very interested in all aspects of education. The historically black 
colleges and universities, fortunately, are in the spotlight and have 
been the recipients of quite a bit of Federal attention from both 
parties in the last year or so; and in the last 10 years the Federal 
Government has stepped up to the plate and provided special assistance 
to the 113 historically black colleges and universities. They were 
established and they achieved a very important role, have come to a 
very important role, achieved a very important place in African 
American society by educating those who could not get an education 
anywhere else. Many of our leaders of today still are graduates of 
historically black colleges and universities.
  But the history of those institutions is a history where they got 
very little help from the mainstream society, and they received a lot 
of hostility and animosity from the local communities. The southern 
communities were often very hostile toward the so-called intellectuals 
who were in the black colleges and universities.
  Even after the Morril Act, the Federal act which established land 
grant colleges in every State, even after that Act was amended to 
establish a parallel land grant college in the segregated States where 
blacks were not allowed to attend the land grant colleges, even after 
that happened, there was tremendous discrimination. The amount of money 
received by the land grant colleges which blacks attended, were allowed 
to attend, were allowed to set up and provide a faculty for, et cetera, 
was much smaller. The amount of money was much smaller. That 
historically was the case, and even today those same land grant 
colleges established by the Federal Government are receiving less 
funding from the States than the land grant colleges that serve 
primarily the mainstream population, traditionally white land grant 
colleges.
  So every step of the way there have been impediments. Is race a 
factor? Yes, unfortunately, it is. All over the world you have racism, 
and certainly you have racism in the United States. But the important 
thing is to note that we must operate and act and work constantly to 
make certain that the negative impact of racism is not used to make 
other people suffer. We must alleviate as much racism as possible, 
counteract as much racism as possible, pass laws which keep racism in 
check. That is the best we can do.
  History has shown us that the only way we can guarantee that you will 
be able to make the progress that these institutions have made and be 
able to cite the positive accomplishments is that some group has to 
work against the prevailing, ongoing racism. We have had in America a 
golden opportunity to do that.

                              {time}  1845

  What makes America great is that it provides the room, it provides 
the leeway, to fight; and we have fought and accomplished a great deal, 
despite the racism.
  I would like to look forward to the day when an American President 
could say that he wants to apologize for slavery and receive the 
overwhelming support of the American people. Unfortunately, when 
President Clinton implied that he might want to do that in the last 
year of his term, he was criticized; and there was a poll taken and the 
majority of white Americans, 70 percent, said no, there should be no 
apology for slavery.
  We can apologize for the Holocaust. The Germans can apologize for the 
Holocaust, and the Japanese asked to apologize to the Chinese and 
Koreans; but there should be no apology for slavery, the majority of 
American people said.
  That is unfortunate, because the opposite of not apologizing is 
covering up. It does not mean I refuse to apologize; but it means I 
will cover up, and we will continue to cover it up.
  The only way we can break the back of racism and guarantee that 
racism will not be harmful is to recognize it and jointly, black-white, 
all minorities, work together to try to alleviate the harsh impact and 
effect of racism, so everybody in America has an equal opportunity to 
go forward.
  Black History Month is a time to celebrate those positive 
achievements; it is also a time to remind everybody that we cannot 
achieve unless we recognize the truth of racism and attempt to combat 
it.

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