[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 15, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H796-H797]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 IN RECOGNITION OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. West) is recognized 
for 30 minutes.
  Mr. WEST. Mr. Speaker, in commemoration of Black History Month, I 
rise to acknowledge the Republican Party's proud and storied history of 
standing up for the rights of African Americans.
  The first black Members of Congress served during Reconstruction, and 
they were all Republicans. They won their seats, despite fierce threats 
of violence against black voters by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and 
were successful only as a result of the firm support they received from 
the Republican Party.
  One of these Members was Josiah T. Walls, a slave who earned his 
freedom through service to the Union in the Civil War. He settled in 
Alachua County, in our sunny State of Florida, and was repeatedly 
elected to Congress at-large.
  In some ways, Mr. Speaker, I carry the torch of Josiah Walls. You 
see, in 1876, the Democrats contested his election and had him replaced 
midterm with one of their own. No black Republican would again be 
elected from Florida to this House until November 2, 2010, when the 
voters of that State entrusted me to be their Representative.
  On my desk in my office, there is a book called ``Capitol Men,'' and 
it is a biography of those first black Members of Congress. I stand 
where Josiah Walls and the other early black Republican Members of 
Congress once stood--Hiram Revels of Mississippi; Benjamin Turner of 
Alabama; Jefferson Long of Georgia; Robert DeLarge, Robert Brown 
Elliott, and Joseph Rainey, all of South Carolina. They were the ones 
who carried that first torch for my colleague, Tim Scott.

                              {time}  2010

  They would have stood here urging support for policies of equal 
opportunity for all. Mr. Speaker, I stand here this evening to 
recognize their legacy.
  The Republican Party has always been the party of freedom. Today, we 
understand that our principles are best served when we act as stalwart 
advocates of free markets. But historically, Republicans understood 
that the value of every human life is diminished when any human life is 
made to work against its will.
  Free markets are characterized by the free exchange of goods and 
services--and by the free exchange of labor for compensation. You see, 
Mr. Speaker, without free people, there can be no free markets.
  Where men are not free, freedom does not reign. And so the 
Republicans have always been the party of free men, of individual 
freedom. It was President Abraham Lincoln, the father of the Grand Old 
Party, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and brought about the 
freeing of the slaves. For many, this is the beginning and the end of 
the Republican Party's role in advancing equal rights. But that 
understanding misses the myriad ways our party went on to better the 
lives of Black Americans and cheapens the many contributions that later 
generations of Republicans made to the cause of freedom.
  It was, in fact, Republicans of their day who worked to pass the 
13th, the 14th, and the 15th Amendments, securing for African Americans 
deliverance from slavery, equal protection under the law, and the right 
to vote.
  Each of these accomplishments did its part to cement the fundamental 
freedoms all Americans enjoy today. None of them could have gotten off 
the ground without GOP support. Take the 13th amendment, for example. 
At Abraham Lincoln's request, the Republican National Committee 
Chairman Edwin Morgan made abolishing slavery an official part of the 
party's platform in 1864. At that year's national convention, he opened 
with a statement on the topic. He said:

       The party of which you, gentlemen, are the delegated and 
     honored representatives, will fall far short of accomplishing 
     its great mission unless among its other resolves it shall 
     declare for such an amendment of the Constitution as will 
     positively prohibit African slavery in the United States.

  The 14th Amendment was no different. A little known fact about that 
law that granted Black Americans citizenship, with all the rights and 
privileges thereof, is that every vote in favor was cast by a 
Republican and every vote against was cast by a Democrat.
  In 1968, when the Democrat-controlled legislature of New Jersey voted 
to rescind its ratification of the 14th Amendment, it was the State's 
Republican Governor who vetoed that attempt.
  Mr. Speaker, it was the Republican-controlled 39th Congress that 
established the Buffalo Soldiers, a fighting force of six regiments of 
Black American troops. They would soon become known for exhibiting the 
``courage of a cornered buffalo'' in battle while posted to the 
frontier. In peacetime, they gained renown for being the finest 
horsemen the Army had to offer. And in 1907, the 10th Cavalry Regiment 
of Buffalo Soldiers was sent to the United States Military Academy at 
West Point to teach the cadets riding skills and mounted drill.
  Mr. Speaker, think about that for a second: the commanders of their 
day were so confident in the ability of the Buffalo Soldiers that they 
entrusted them with the training of the next generation of Army 
leaders. And it was the Republicans who made that happen.
  It was the Republicans who passed the 15th Amendment, as well. For 
once, the story is true that not every Republican supported it. A few 
abstained, saying the measure did not go far enough. It was the 
Democrats who voted against the 15th Amendment, and when it passed 
anyway, it was the Democrats who resorted to the use of poll taxes, 
literacy tests, intimidation and other pernicious practices in an 
effort to keep Black Americans from exercising their right to vote. 
This was something that my grandparents and my parents experienced 
growing up in south Georgia.
  It was a Republican by the name of Senator Charles Sumner who got the 
equal rights movement on its feet. A fierce abolitionist and leader of 
the ``Radical Republicans''--sounds very familiar when they start 
talking about Tea Party Republicans--Senator Sumner wrote and 
shepherded the first ever civil rights bill through Congress. It was a 
Republican President, the great General Ulysses S. Grant, who signed it 
into law the same day that it passed. And that comprehensive bill, the 
Civil Rights Act of 1875, would become the blueprint for every 
subsequent piece of civil rights legislation to come before Congress 
despite the fact that it was struck down by a backward-looking court.
  It was the Republicans who first called for racial justice in the 
Armed Forces, not only allowing Black Americans to serve their country, 
but welcoming them to serve their country alongside their white 
brothers.
  It was a Republican judge named Elbert Tuttle who time and again 
ruled in favor of civil rights and who went on

[[Page H797]]

to order the University of Mississippi to admit its first ever Black 
college student. It was a Republican Supreme Court Justice who authored 
the decision in Brown v. Board of Education that recognized racial 
segregation for what it was: a violation of the United States 
Constitution.
  And when a school district in Arkansas refused to integrate, it was a 
Republican President, Dwight David Eisenhower, who sent in the 101st 
Airborne Division to escort the Little Rock Nine to class. However, it 
was a Democrat Governor in Orval Faubus, you may recall, who had tried 
to use his National Guardsmen to prevent them from enrolling.
  Mr. Speaker, Republicans were unfazed by the many Democrats, 
including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who criticized President 
Eisenhower's decision. Meanwhile, it was the Democrats in the Senate 
who filibustered the first civil rights act of the 20th century and the 
Republicans who managed to pass it nonetheless.
  The law established a Civil Rights Division within the Justice 
Department and authorized the Attorney General to request injunctions 
against anyone attempting to deny a person's right to vote. It was 
written at the behest of President Eisenhower after a long drought of 
civil rights bills under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and 
President Harry Truman.
  It was a Senate minority leader, Everett Dirksen, a Republican, who 
helped write the first Civil Rights Act of 1964, widely regarded as the 
most influential of them all. And in recent years, it's been the 
Republican Party that has fought to prevent African Americans from 
being trapped in a permanent underclass through dependence on 
government handouts.
  In the 1990s, it was the Republican-controlled 104th Congress that 
passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Then-
Democrat President Bill Clinton signed it only after reluctantly having 
vetoed it twice.
  This reform changed the face of welfare, ensuring that recipients who 
were able to work would be required to seek employment. No longer would 
government checks be seen as an entitlement. No longer would States 
have a financial incentive to add as many names to their welfare rolls 
as possible. Finally, there was an alternative to the cycle of poverty 
caused by years of misguided Democrat policy. And it's been Republicans 
who have continued to fight for the underprivileged communities, even 
as we're painted as the party of the white upper class.
  In 2004, another Republican-controlled Congress under the leadership 
of Republican President George W. Bush signed an omnibus bill that 
included a voucher program for school children right here in the 
District of Columbia. Instead of being shackled to the failed public 
school system, thousands of students were able to use the first Federal 
Government vouchers to escape high-performing private schools.

                              {time}  2020

  Mr. Speaker, what Republicans have long understood is that poor 
communities are best served when they're empowered to care for 
themselves. The more they come to rely on government checks, the less 
they learn to rely on their own ability and ingenuity.
  Our party firmly believes in the safety net. We reject the idea of 
the safety net becoming a hammock. For this reason, the Republican 
value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to 
the poorest among us. Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-
increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious 
form of slavery remaining in the world today and does not promote 
economic freedom.
  Time after time, the GOP has stood strong as leaders on issues of 
conscience. Even when the positions we've taken have been unpopular, 
we've held the line and ultimately brought about liberty and justice 
for all. From eliminating slavery, to securing full citizenship and 
voting rights for African Americans, to calling for desegregation even 
in the most hostile bastions of the Deep South, to implementing school 
choice in poor communities, to helping black families break out of the 
cycle of welfare dependence, Mr. Speaker, Republicans have been on the 
front lines of the fight for equal rights and individual manifest 
destiny since our party's founding under Lincoln.
  So, too, has the party led on issues like reducing the size of 
government, streamlining the Federal bureaucracy, and returning power 
to the States. These positions didn't always garner the most popular 
support at the time. It's easier to convince a person that a government 
should be doing something for them it currently isn't than to convince 
a person the government shouldn't be doing something for them it 
currently is.
  But real visionary leaders don't retreat from fights. It is said that 
one evening, as George Washington sat at his table after dinner, the 
fire behind him flared up, leading him to move his chair away so as not 
to end up getting burned. When someone called George Washington out, 
saying a general ought to be able to stand the fire, he responded that 
no general should ever be taking fire from behind.
  That is the essence of integrity and conviction--the willingness to 
stand for what you believe at all times, alone if need be, without the 
option of retreat, no matter how tough the slog ahead may be, and to do 
so with the faith that eventually it is possible to transform a losing 
fight into a winning one.
  For inspiration, we need only to look to the former slave and 
Republican, Frederick Douglass. Having found his way to freedom through 
education and hard work, he could have been forgiven for retiring from 
the public eye, but he didn't back down from the work still to be done. 
Instead, he made himself one of the most stalwart champions of not just 
the antislavery movement, but the women's rights movement as well. He 
wasn't content to lend his political capital to causes that would 
benefit him. He knew what we know, that injustice anywhere is an 
affront to the human spirit.
  To free African Americans from the bonds of slavery was only the 
first step for Frederick Douglass, and he would not be satisfied until 
he helped liberate women from the bonds of misogyny as well. In those 
days, Douglass could count on the Republican Party to be his ally in 
the fight. Today, we remain no less dedicated to the cause of freedom.
  So therefore, Mr. Speaker, with a core belief in the supremacy and 
the sovereignty of the individual and the unconditional dignity of 
every human life, the Republican Party is, always has been, and forever 
shall be the party of equality of opportunity.
  Happy Black History Month.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________