[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 63 (Wednesday, April 30, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5529-S5530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




COMMEMORATING THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, 
                                  JR.

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 35 years ago on April 4, 1968, Martin 
Luther King, Jr.'s life was tragically cut short by an assassin's 
bullet. Dr. King was just 39 years old. In 1963, Dr. King delivered a 
funeral eulogy for the children who were killed by a firebomb at the 
16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King said: 
``Your children did not live long, but they lived well. The quantity of 
their lives was disturbingly small, but the quality of their lives was 
magnificently big.'' Dr. King's own words could be said about himself.
  Only three Americans have ever had a Federal holiday named for them 
by Congress. Two were presidents George Washington helped create our 
Nation and Abraham Lincoln helped preserve it. The third, Martin Luther 
King, Jr., never held an elected office but he redeemed the moral 
purpose of the United States. He reminded us that since we are all 
created equal, all of us are equally entitled to be treated with 
dignity, fairness, and humanity.
  Last month I had an opportunity to visit the State of Alabama for the 
first time. I went there with Democratic and Republican Members of 
Congress, on a delegation led by Republican John Lewis from Atlanta, 
GA. We paid a visit to some of the most important spots in American 
civil rights history. Dr. King's fingerprints are on these and 
countless other watershed events in American civil rights history.

[[Page S5530]]

  We went to Montgomery and stood on the street corner where Rosa Parks 
boarded the bus in 1955 and refused to give up her seat to a white 
rider, as was required by city law. After Rosa Parks was arrested, Dr. 
King led a bus boycott in Montgomery, where he had just moved for his 
first pastorate.
  We went to Birmingham and visited the 16th Street Baptist Church. 
Before the tragic bombing in 1963, the church had been used for civil 
rights rallies and desegregation protests, and Dr. King had spoken 
there and throughout Birmingham on many occasions. He wrote his famous 
``Letter from a Birmingham Jail'' 40 years ago after being arrested for 
leading a protest in April 1963. We went to Selma and stood at the spot 
on the Edmund Pettus Bridge where, in 1965, a young John Lewis was 
beaten unconscious by Alabama State troopers, at the time the 52-mile 
voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery was turned back. In 
response, Dr. King led a second march, and these brave actions led to 
Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Dr. King is the 
pre-eminent civil rights figure in our Nation's history, but he would 
not have been as successful had it not been for a handful of courageous 
federal judges who despite death threats to themselves and family 
members used the judiciary to help dismantle the legacy of Jim Crow. 
For example, Alabama Judge Frank Johnson was part of a three-judge 
panel that struck down Montgomery's bus-segregation law, holding that 
separate but equal facilities were violations of the due process and 
equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. And after 
Governor George Wallace banned the Selma-to-Montgomery march, Judge 
Johnson issued the order that allowed Dr. King and Rep. Lewis to 
conduct the march, calling the right to march ``commensurate with the 
enormity of the wrongs that are being protested.'' Dr. King called 
Judge Johnson a jurist who had ``given true meaning to the word 
`justice.'''
  Dr. King was keenly aware of the importance of the federal judiciary 
to ensure equality and justice in our society. In a 1958 speech at Beth 
Emet synagogue in Evanston, Illinois, Dr. King said: ``As we look to 
Washington, so often it seems that the judicial branch of the 
Government is fighting the battle alone. The executive and legislative 
branches of the Government have been all too slow and stagnant and 
silent, and even apathetic, at points. The hour has come now for the 
federal government to use its power, its constitutional power, to 
enforce the law of the land.''
  Regrettably, President George W. Bush has been appointing Federal 
judges who have tried to limit the ability of the federal government to 
use its constitutional power to enforce the law of the land. Many of 
his judicial nominees are conservative ideologues who believe that the 
Federal Government lacks the constitutional power to provide meaningful 
remedies and access to the courts for victims of discrimination. In the 
name of States rights, these nominees have urged federal courts to 
strip Congress of its powers and citizens of their remedies. I question 
whether the President is appointing men and women to the federal 
judiciary who will make courageous decisions and, in the words of Dr. 
King, give true meaning to the word justice.
  Despite this unfortunate trend, I think Dr. King would have remained 
optimistic. In a 1965 speech of Dr. King's entitled ``A Long, Long Way 
to Go''--published for the first time this month in a new book called 
``Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches''--Dr. King 
said:

       There are dark moments in this struggle, but I want to tell 
     you that I've seen it over and over again, that so often the 
     darkest hour is that hour that just appears before the dawn 
     of a new fulfillment.

  Dr. King's optimism in the face of dark moments is one of his 
enduring legacies. On this 35th anniversary of his death, I pay tribute 
to his optimism, courage, and heroism that transformed our Nation.

                          ____________________