[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 5, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S59-S60]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING SENATOR CHARLES SUMNER

 Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts. Mr. President, today I rise to 
celebrate the bicentennial, January 6, 2011, of the birth of U.S. 
Senator Charles Sumner, who so ably represented the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts in this body

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from 1851 until his death in 1874. While I am honored to serve the 
people of Massachusetts from the physical desk once occupied by Senator 
Sumner, I rise today in recognition of Charles Sumner's tireless and 
often solitary quest for racial equality, education reform, and social 
justice.
  By all accounts, Senator Sumner was one of this body's greatest 
orators; Sumner didn't give speeches, he unleashed them. According to 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sumner delivered remarks ``like a cannoneer 
ramming down cartridges.'' The target of Sumner's verbal fusillade was 
almost always injustice, especially slavery and the men and 
institutions that sought to expand or perpetuate it. Yet, even among 
fellow mid-19th century abolitionists, Charles Sumner's views on racial 
equality were considered utopian. Years before the Emancipation 
Proclamation, Sumner called for the abolition of slavery. Decades 
before the 15th amendment declared that the ``right of citizens of the 
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United 
States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition 
of servitude'' and nearly a century before the Voting Rights Act, 
Sumner insisted that all Black men should have the rights of 
citizenship.
  Charles Sumner was not born into a powerful or wealthy Massachusetts 
family; his upbringing in Boston was at best modest. Yet his parents 
insisted that Charles receive the best education available, and he was 
fortunate enough to attend the acclaimed Boston Latin School, where he 
excelled and went on to receive degrees from Harvard College and 
Harvard Law School. Sumner spent his late twenties travelling through 
Europe and England, where his intellect and education impressed leading 
officials with whom he formed lasting relationships that proved 
invaluable to the Union years later when Sumner served on the Foreign 
Relations Committee.
  In May of 1856, Sumner became the victim of one of the most 
unfortunate incidents in Senate history. Days after Sumner delivered a 
vitriolic speech against Kansas-Nebraska Act coauthor Andrew Pickens 
Butler, the South Carolina Senator's nephew, a Member of the House of 
Representatives, approached Sumner while he was sitting at his Senate 
desk and beat him unconscious with a metal tipped cane. The attack left 
Sumner gravely injured, and he did not return to the Senate for 3 
years. Sumner's ``Crime Against Kansas'' speech, and the violent 
retribution for it, further eroded the already strained relations 
between representatives of free and slave States. In his day, Senator 
Charles Sumner was considered an extreme, a wild-eyed dreamer whose 
vision of a society free of institutional racism seemed as unachievable 
as it was radical. Today, 200 years after his birth, we are the heirs 
of Charles Sumner's vision. Dozens of streets, schools, and towns 
across our country bear the name of this outspoken Senator from 
Massachusetts.
  Today, the issue of education reform looms large in our Nation's 
consciousness. Too many of our public school systems are failing our 
children. We would be wise to look at the legacy of Senator Sumner. He 
was one of his era's most vocal advocates for high-quality public 
schools and argued in the Massachusetts courts for the integration of 
the Commonwealth's schools. He based his argument on the--at the time--
novel concept that the inferior schools to which many children were 
relegated had lasting effects on their development. In fact, a century 
later this very argument would underpin our Nation's most famous civil 
rights case. In 1954, a young Black girl named Linda Brown was 
prevented from enrolling in an all-White public school that was much 
closer to her home than the all-Black school she was forced to attend. 
Her father joined a class action suit against the city's school board, 
and the resulting case would forever transform American society. The 
city was Topeka, KS. The case was Brown v. Board of Education. 
Ironically, the school where she had been denied was known as the 
Sumner Elementary School. Peering down from somewhere on high, Senator 
Sumner must have been pleased that injustice was not allowed to stand 
in his name.
  At the time of his death in 1874, Sumner was still agitating for 
school reform and Federal legislation to repeal all discriminatory laws 
against Blacks and the tens of thousands of Asians who had immigrated 
to America and helped build our transcontinental railroad system. The 
late Senator Robert C. Byrd, a noted historian of the Senate, once 
wrote, ``After Clay, Calhoun and Webster, no nineteenth-century senator 
stood higher on the political horizon than did Charles Sumner, nor did 
any garner more praise, condemnation and controversy than that eloquent 
Massachusetts senator.'' Today, I am proud to celebrate the 
bicentennial of Sumner's birth and his incredible service in the U.S. 
Senate.

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