[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 117 (Thursday, July 30, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8533-S8534]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               NAACP 100TH ANNIVERSARY: IMAGES OF HISTORY

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise in recognition of the NAACP in 
this, its 100th anniversary month. I rise in praise of what this 
extraordinary organization has so proudly come to represent to every 
American who deeply believes in freedom, human dignity, and equal 
justice under the law.
  Yet I rise with a heavy heart, filled with powerful lasting images of 
the unimaginable suffering surrounding the founding of this great 
organization, images of the savage hand of racism--horrific lynchings 
in the middle of the night, the 1908 race riot in Springfield, IL, the 
birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, that led a bold band of Americans to do 
all they could, whatever they could, to end the violence against 
Blacks, the vicious, unveiled hatred and intolerance that to this day 
has left deep and painful scars on this Nation.
  I rise in recognition of those courageous men and women who, a 
century ago, stepped forward to found the NAACP, those who stood 
against violence, who stood against hatred, Blacks such as W.E.B. Du 
Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, and Whites such as 
Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, descendants of 
America's first abolitionists. These men and women came forward, 
echoing the call of W.E.B. Du Bois to secure for all people the rights 
of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution to end 
slavery, provide equal justice under law, and ensure universal adult 
male suffrage.

[[Page S8534]]

  We all know that the full realization of equality, freedom, civil 
rights, voting rights, and equal justice under law has been a long, 
sometimes faltering, journey fraught with dead ends, deep divides, and 
seemingly insurmountable obstacles on the road to a more perfect Union. 
It has been a journey of starts and stops, with harrowing moments--some 
horrific, some heart-wrenching, but all equally historic, all part of 
the American saga, each forever etched in the collective memory of this 
Nation.
  The magnificent building in which we do our work today is a monument 
to that journey. Those who labored to raise this glorious building in 
tribute to American democracy were themselves slaves. They laid the 
foundation. They cut the stones. They raised the walls and built the 
magnificent dome of the U.S. Capitol. Those slaves lived here on 
Capitol Hill in the shadow of what is now the Statue of Freedom that 
looks eastward toward the rising Sun and what was then the new dawn of 
a rising nation.
  They are, in many ways, the ancestors of Freedom herself, the 
precursors of an event to which we have so boldly stood witness in 
January, in the shadow of their labors, as a Black man raised his hand 
on the west front of the Capitol to take the oath of office as 
President of the United States. What greater tribute to them.
  We may have come a long way since they built this monument to 
democracy, but every day, with every troubling racial incident we see 
on television or read about in blogs or in newspapers, it is clear the 
century-long work of the NAACP goes on, the work continues. But it is 
equally clear, with Barack Obama in the White House, we have come of 
age, united by a common history, tragic at times, fought on the bloody 
battlefields of a civil war and still being waged in the hearts of the 
intolerant and unenlightened among us.
  Let the images of history tell the story of America plainly, 
honestly, for what it is--from the labors of those slaves who built 
this Capitol to the founding of the NAACP; from the battlefields of 
Gettysburg and Manassas to the freedom rides and marches through Selma 
and Montgomery; from bloodshed, tragedy and travails, sacrifices and 
sorrows from those who lived and died on plantations or rode the 
Underground Railroad north, to those freed by the Emancipation 
Proclamation; from the devastating inhumanity of slavery to the 
election of Barack Obama.
  There are countless images of courage and heroism, humiliation and 
humility, honor and horror, dignity and indignity; images of hope and 
despair, fear and frustration; images of fire hoses and police dogs 
turned on Americans whose only crime was the longing to be free and 
equal; images still clear in our minds, triumphant images of Martin 
Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial, millions marching on Washington; 
deeply moving images of peace-loving men like Congressman John Lewis 
beaten down by billy clubs because he simply wanted to cross a bridge; 
images of abject poverty, of two worlds separate and apart and far from 
equal; tragic images of a great man lying in a pool of blood on a motel 
balcony in Atlanta in April of 1968. But none so powerful, none so 
deeply moving as Barack Obama taking the oath of office as President of 
the United States on the west front of the Capitol 41 years later.
  These are the awesome images of the history of race since the 
founding of the NAACP. They represent the history of America as much as 
they represent the history of the NAACP, and we must--all of us, Black 
and White alike--embrace them, understand them, and learn from them; 
learn from the tragedy and the sorrow; learn from the long, hard-fought 
battle that was the civil rights movement; learn from the debate on 
this floor that eventually led to the Voting Rights Act; learn from the 
prosegregationist terrorism that led to the assassination of NAACP 
Mississippi field secretary Medgar Evers and the death of Dr. King. 
Today, all of these images, the good as well as the bad, remain part of 
who we are, part of the American story in which the NAACP has played a 
pivotal role.
  But the Nation has changed, and so the mission of the NAACP has 
evolved from what it was 100 years ago. The violence has lessened, but 
the virus of racism and prejudice has mutated, as all viruses do.
  Now too often, intolerance rears its ugly head with the mere mention 
of the word ``immigration.'' And when it does, let us be comforted by 
the knowledge that the NAACP is still there, still working, still 
fighting the good fight.
  Today, the NAACP is an expanded organization dedicated to the 
elimination of all race prejudice in America, whether that prejudice be 
against Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and all Americans who seek 
political, educational, economic, and social equality. For 100 years, 
the goal of the NAACP has been to tear down the walls of racial 
discrimination through the democratic process and make tolerance and 
equality a reality for all of us. Let that goal be realized in our 
generation, in our time, and let us continue--one nation, indivisible--
on that long journey to a more perfect Union.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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