[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 12, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               HONORING THE 99TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NAACP

  Mr. SESTAK. Mr. Speaker, for nearly a century, the National 
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, has been 
fighting for the civil rights and dignity of people of color. As a 
result of their efforts, our great Nation today can boast of a society 
more diverse, productive, prosperous and hopeful than any in history.
  However, today's hope is a far cry from the violent segregation and 
discrimination that inspired Mary White Ovington, William English 
Walling and Dr. Henry Moskowitz to meet in a small room of a New York 
City apartment and commit the fledgling NAACP to the most important 
social movement in our national history. Today, the spirit of those 
brave and patriotic founders lives on in its leaders, like Dr. Joan 
Duval-Flynn, president of the Media, Pennsylvania NAACP chapter in my 
home district. I rise today to congratulate Dr. Duval-Flynn for her 
vision, intelligence and dedication. She leads a chapter of the NAACP 
born of a violent act in the early 1920s and committed to making 
Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a 21st century community where people of 
all colors and creeds live together as neighbors, friends and first-
class citizens.
  In my first year representing the Seventh District of Pennsylvania, 
the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis, featured an article titled ``Woman 
Warriors, Female Combatants Sacrifice Lives for Country.'' That article 
gave me cause to consider all of the extraordinary women and men of 
color I had the privilege of serving with during my 30 years in our 
Armed Forces. For that privilege and honor, I owe, and our Nation owes, 
a personal debt of gratitude to Dr. Duval-Flynn, Mary White Ovington 
and countless other members and leaders of the NAACP.
  As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in his first editorial page of The Crisis in 
1910, that voice of the NAACP ``will stand for the rights of men, 
irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American 
democracy, and for the reasonable but earnest and persistent attempt to 
gain these rights and realize these ideals.'' No truer words can be 
spoken than on this birthday of the NAACP. I am proud, therefore, to 
know and work with this one remarkable leader, Dr. Joan Duval-Flynn, in 
my district as with many others in my district and with the NAACP who 
gave us leaders such as she.
  Founded on February 12, 1909, the NAACP is the Nation's oldest and 
largest civil rights organization. It has worked successfully with 
allies of all races who believe in, and stand for, the principles of 
civil rights on which the organization was founded.
  The NAACP's legacy includes historic events as well as distinguished 
leaders, as I mentioned, W.E.B. Du Bois, but other civil rights leaders 
such as Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers and Thurgood Marshall, who served 
as special counsel for the NAACP when he argued the historic U.S. 
Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark victory 
for equality that outlawed segregation in our schools. Our obligation 
to African Americans and all Americans is to honor the accomplishments 
of the past by acting in a substantive manner to improve their lives in 
the future.
  Thank you, NAACP; thank you, Dr. Joan Duval-Flynn; and thank you for 
the time this morning, Mr. Speaker.

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