[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 118 (Tuesday, September 10, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6320-S6323]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
16TH STREET CHURCH BOMBING
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, two weeks ago, thousands of people
gathered on the National Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial to
celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Martin
Luther King, Jr. gave his historic ``I Have a Dream'' speech. That
remarkable moment in this Nation's history was a peaceful day of unity
and we rightfully remember the inspiring words of Dr. King.
We are reminded this week of just how quickly that hope and positive
signs of progress were challenged by a stunning act of violence. Just a
few days after Dr. King inspired a nation with his dream for his four
children, four other children in Birmingham were killed at their church
because of the color of their skin. On September 15, 1963, a bomb was
planted by members of the Ku Klux Klan at the 16th Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Addie Mae Collins, 14, Denise McNair,
11, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, were innocent victims
of racial hatred. The inhumanity of those who conspired and killed
children in a church may seem unimaginable in our Nation today, but, as
Colbert King of the Washington Post noted recently, ``Before al-Qaeda,
there was the Ku Klux Klan.''
We celebrate the significant strides we have made with determined
efforts in forging a more just and equal America since the KKK's reign
of terror, and yet we cannot forget that these events occurred just
days after the March on Washington. It occurred in the lifetime of 88
of 100 members of this Senate body. It is our recent history, not
ancient history.
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The tragic deaths of those four little girls, along with the other
shining examples of bravery, patriotism and resolve during the Civil
Rights movement, catalyzed passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These laws helped to transform our
Nation and ensure that our most basic promises to our citizens are more
than just words on a page, honored only in their breach.
The inspiring possibilities described so eloquently by Dr. King, and
the depravity and horror of the Birmingham church bombing just weeks
later, reveal an important lesson about our history. The path to
progress in our Democracy is winding, and sometimes very, very
difficult. We know from our shared experience that we cannot be the
Nation that we strive to be by setting the dial on autopilot and
assuming that all will be well. There are so many reminders of the
winding path to progress, and recently we experienced a considerable
detour.
Three months ago, a narrow majority of the Supreme Court held that
the coverage provision of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was
unconstitutional. Section 5, often called the ``heart of the Voting
Rights Act,'' provided a remedy for unconstitutional discrimination in
voting by requiring jurisdictions with the worst histories of
discrimination to ``preclear'' all voting changes before they could
take effect. The remedy is both necessary and important because it
stops the discriminatory voting practice before our fellow Americans'
rights are violated. By striking down the coverage provision for
Section 5, the Supreme Court's ruling leaves this vital protection
unenforceable.
While certain barriers to participation have been eliminated, we
continue to see discriminatory voting measures such as arbitrary
registration rules, polling-place manipulation, voter purges,
challenges or other devices to deny access to the ballot, as well as
vote dilution tactics. Since the Court's recent decision in Shelby
County, several states have already decided to impose new barriers to
voting, thereby reversing the gains that we have made through the last
five decades.
These include measures taken by Texas, North Carolina, and Florida to
undermine their citizens' right to vote and to participate in our
democracy. But on this day, when we reflect on the contributions of our
children to the cause of liberty, perhaps no story is more worth
retelling than the story of the Prairie View A&M students. It is a
story that bridges the past with both the present and the future.
Students from that historically black university have been fighting for
their voting rights for more than four decades now, and if not for the
Voting Rights Act, many of these students would have been denied their
fundamental right to vote.
The history is well-documented in a recent Houston Chronicle article
by Renee Lee. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
In the 1970s, the Justice Department filed an action against Waller
County and its state officials for using a questionnaire to deny
Prairie View students the right to vote. In 1992, 19 students were
indicted for improperly voting, which ultimately led to a U.S. Supreme
Court ruling that authorized college students to register and vote in
communities where they live while at school.
In 2004, the NAACP and four Prairie View students filed a federal
case after the county district attorney tried to enforce residency
requirements that would keep students from voting. A Section 5
enforcement suit was filed by civil rights organizations around the
same time after county officials shortened the early voting period at
the campus in violation of Section 5. This effort to narrow student
participation came at a time when a student leader sought elective
office. Testimony about this recent chapter at Prairie View A&M was
submitted to Congress in support of the 2006 Reauthorization of the
Voting Rights Act. It was compelling evidence that voting
discrimination persists in that community and that even a Supreme Court
ruling was not sufficient protection.
Two years after the reauthorization of Section 5, in 2008, nearly
1,000 Prairie View students marched in protest for the lack of an early
voting place on campus. The county had reduced the number of early
voting polling sites from six to one, requiring students to walk miles
to the nearest polling location. If you did not know the long and
tortured history of the schemes to block Prairie View A&M voters from
their constitutionally protected rights, moving a polling place may
seem like merely a matter of administrative convenience, but in voting,
both history and context matter. The Justice Department under Attorney
General Michael Mukasey ultimately entered into a consent decree with
Waller County that required officials to restore three polling sites.
And now, the students from this historically black university are once
again fighting to exercise their fundamental right to vote by demanding
an accessible polling place. The Prairie View A&M story illustrates
that sometimes discrimination starts early, and that some officials are
surprisingly persistent in their efforts to erect barriers in the path
of our youngest voters. The Voting Rights Act stands as a guardian
against these schemes to discourage young voter participation.
But now, following the Shelby County ruling, and with a college
leader seeking elective office in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, local
officials have borrowed the Prairie View A&M disenfranchisement
playbook. There, a party chairman challenged the eligibility of
Montravius King from standing for office by claiming that Mr. King did
not meet the residency requirement because he lived in a dorm. The
premise of this challenge is flatly contradicted by Supreme Court
precedent and the decades of advocacy over Prairie View A&M students'
voter access. Nevertheless, North Carolina local officials were
initially able to disqualify Mr. King's candidacy. There were also
indications that some in Elizabeth City, North Carolina intended to
employ new voter challenge procedures in the state to prevent students
from the historically black college from voting. It is perhaps no
wonder, then, that part of the officials' plan also involved removing
the polling place from the campus. Last week, local election board
reversed itself only after a huge public outcry, but these events
reveal that some things have changed and some, unfortunately, have not.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from
the Washington Post by Mary Curtis, which documents the efforts by
North Carolina's state officials to infringe on the fundamental right
to vote.
When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965,
he declared that: ``Through this act, and its enforcement, an important
instrument of freedom passes into the hands of millions of our
citizens.'' We must remain vigilant and protect the rights of all
Americans to exercise this fundamental right.
The recent Supreme Court decision placed the burden on Congress to
respond with a legislative fix. It is therefore our duty and
constitutional obligation to not waver from the path of greater
political inclusion that we have set for ourselves and the Nation
through our bipartisan support of the Voting Rights Act.
We must restore the vital protections that were weakened by the
Supreme Court's ruling. We must provide additional remedies for states
and counties, anywhere in the Nation, that not only have a history of
discriminating against their voters, but continue to do so. We must
extend the reach of these protections to states that commit serious
voting rights violations in the future. We must amend the existing
provisions of the Act to make those protections more effective. And we
must provide greater transparency for changes to voting procedures so
that voters are made aware of these changes. These are the kinds of
bipartisan solutions that we should all be able to agree on.
As we continue the fight to combat discrimination, we should remember
the words of Dr. King. We should remember the aspirations of students
like Montravius King. We should remember the contributions of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Congressional leader John
Lewis. And we should remember that those four girls who died in the
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, and who are being posthumously
honored today with Congressional Gold Medals, were part of a movement
that helped make America better, stronger and
[[Page S6322]]
more just. The way to truly honor them is not by words alone but
through our actions and leadership. While we commemorate the sacrifice
of these four girls, our work does not end with this commemoration. Our
work is ahead of us and we must act together in a bipartisan manner to
protect the fundamental right to vote for all Americans. All of our
children are depending on it.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Aug. 29, 2013]
Past is Present as North Carolina Honors 1963 March and Battles Voting
Laws
(By Mary C. Curtis)
Charlotte.--In North Carolina, commemorations of the 50th
anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther
King's dream credited past struggles while a current battle
over voting laws took center stage.
In an uptown Charlotte park Wednesday, the crowd used the
examples of civil rights pioneers in a continuation of the
Moral Monday protests against conservative laws from the
Republican-controlled state legislature. Similar gatherings
were planned in each of the state's 13 congressional
districts. While many issues, including education and health
care spending, were reflected in comments and emblazoned on
signs, the new state voter-ID bill was a unifying cause.
Later Wednesday evening, several Democratic and Republican
legislators took questions from their Mecklenburg County
constituents in a raucous forum called, ironically as it
turned out, ``Solving It Together.'' At the top of the list
in hundreds of questions submitted beforehand--voter-ID laws.
The new laws have already garnered national publicity, and
not the kind North Carolina likes. At the state CEO Forum in
Raleigh last week, former secretary of state Colin Powell
criticized the voting legislation, saying, ``These kinds of
actions do not build on the base.'' He made those remarks
after GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, who had signed the bill into law,
addressed the group, though McCrory later said he left before
the retired general spoke.
Besides requiring photo ID, the bill shortens early voting
by a week, ends preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds,
eliminates same-day voter registration, Sunday voting and
straight-ticket voting, prohibits university students from
using their college IDs and increases the number of poll
watchers who can challenge a voter's eligibility, among other
provisions. It is currently being challenged in court and
Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) has asked Attorney General Eric
Holder to take action as the Justice Department has in Texas.
Actions of GOP-controlled elections boards in North
Carolina have also been grabbing headlines, from the closing
of a polling place at Appalachian State University to the
ruling that a student at historically black Elizabeth City
State University cannot run for city council using his
college address to establish residency.
At Charlotte's Marshall Park, a program of speakers and
singers, as well as the sunny weather, duplicated the mood of
the 1963 Washington march. Under a voter registration tent, a
pledge card from the state NAACP urged attendees to be part
of the ``Forward Together, Not One Step Back'' movement voter
empowerment effort. The Rev. William Barber, head of the
state NAACP, was on the program.
Amy Gollinger, a physician from Davidson, N.C., held a sign
reading ``Protect every American's Right to Vote,'' which she
alternated with ones that said ``Protect women's rights'' and
``Why deny Medicaid to struggling families?'' referencing
McCrory's decision to refuse federal Medicaid funds. She said
Wednesday was a ``perfect time'' to protest. ``Even though
we've come far since 1963, our state legislature has shown we
have much further to go, '' she said. ``It's unbelievable
we've gone from one of the most progressive states to one of
the most regressive. I hope it empowers voters to get out and
make a change.''
Sitting next to Gollinger with a sign reading ``Stop the
attacks on public education!'' James Davidson of Charlotte
said, ``I'm here for Martin Luther King,'' and called
proposals from the legislature ``going back to Jim Crow.'' He
said he hoped new laws would spur citizens to action. ``They
went to sleep and didn't get out to vote,'' he said.
At the Mecklenburg legislators' forum at Central Piedmont
Community College, the crowd in the packed auditorium loudly
registered its approval, disapproval or disbelief as
representatives of the state House and Senate explained
actions on voting, education and the back-and-forth over
attempts to change control of Charlotte Douglas International
Airport from the city to a state authority to a commission.
In heavily Democratic Charlotte, audience sentiment at the
forum, sponsored in part by local media outlets, was loudly
skeptical of the Republican-led changes.
Voting rights led the discussion, with one questioner at
the microphone asking for data on the fraud that is given as
reason for the photo-ID law (the answer came in anecdotal
examples) and another quoting former president Bill Clinton's
words at the Washington commemoration of the 1963 march, ``A
great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy
an assault weapon.''
From somewhere in the crowd came the tweet that there was
much more debate onstage than in the North Carolina General
Assembly, where GOP super-majorities were accused of rushing
through bills.
It seemed less Old South vs. New South than voter voices
vs. ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), with
one question comparing North Carolina's bills to model
legislation from the conservative nonprofit. State Rep. Bill
Brawley, a Republican and active ALEC member, said he
believed in the organization's goals of limited government,
free market capitalism and federalism; Rep. Ruth Samuelson, a
Charlotte Republican, said she has attended one of the
group's meetings. All of the legislators said they serve
their constituents, not any organization.
State Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat, said he
remembered a time when ``we weren't afraid in this state to
be different from the states around us,'' when ideas ``didn't
come out of anybody's playbook.''
After the forum, voters lingered to continue the contact
with officials some thought had not been listening closely
enough during the legislative session. Clodfelter was wistful
as he spoke of the times North Carolina passed pioneering
laws, such as the Racial Justice Act, which allowed death-row
inmates to appeal their sentences and have them converted to
life in prison without parole if they could prove racial bias
in their cases. (It was repealed this year.) ``Now we're
known for the wrong kind of things,'' he said. When one of
his Republican colleagues noted that the Democrat had
Wednesday's crowd on his side, Clodfelter said he answered,
``You made them that way.''
State Sen. Jeff Tarte, a Republican who had managed to be
conciliatory in his conservatism during the panel, insisted
he ``loved'' the night's verbal battles. ``It's what the
American system is all about,'' he said, though since his
party passed its legislative agenda, it was easy for him to
be magnanimous.
Samuelson sat on the edge of the stage as the crowd
filtered out. She defended her support of the voting bill,
and noted a New York Times editorial ``The Decline of North
Carolina'' that criticized the general Assembly's actions and
caused quite a stir in this image-conscious state. She said
studies have found that ``after this bill,'' it's easier to
vote in North Carolina than New York.
When asked what she thought of congressman and civil rights
veteran John Lewis's attack on voter-ID laws, particularly on
the date marking the 50th anniversary of his appearance with
other civil rights leaders at the 1963 March on Washington,
she said, ``I appreciate the sacrifices they made, I
appreciate the emotion around this issue,'' then added, ``I'm
trying to protect the integrity of their vote. . . . They
worked hard for that vote; I want to make sure it doesn't get
stolen.''
State Sen. Malcolm Graham, a Charlotte Democrat, had said
onstage that in North Carolina you're more likely to get
struck by lightning than be affected by voter fraud. He said
that when his daughter returned to historically black
Winston-Salem State University this year, she and other
students were greeted with stories that a county board of
elections chair wanted to eliminate the school's early voting
site. ``Our national brand as a state has been tarnished,''
he said.
After the forum, Graham said he believed the passion would
extend past Wednesday night. ``This thing has legs,'' he
said. The test, he said, would be the tough reelection Hagan
faces in 2014. ``That's the line in the sand the Democrats
have to draw.''
____
[From the Houston Chronicle, Aug. 1, 2013]
Prairie View A&M Student Fights for Voting Poll Site on Campus
(By Renee C. Lee)
A Prairie View A&M University student leader is calling on
officials to add a campus polling place to remedy what she
and a civil rights leader described as decades of voter
suppression.
Priscilla Barbour, president of the Student Government
Association at the historically black university, sent a
letter to Texas Secretary of State John Steen and Waller
County Registrar Robyn German last week requesting that
action be taken by Oct. 1. Barbour says students' voting
rights are being violated because the nearest polling
location is more than a mile away.
The Oct. 1 first deadline, she said, would allow time to
make students aware of the new polling place before the
November elections.
Barbour, a senior, hopes her request will end a battle that
former Prairie View students have failed to win over the
years.
``We've always had problems,'' said Barbour, who is active
with the Texas League of Young Voters. ``Voting is supposed
to be something that's convenient, something you have the
right to do without walking a great distance or standing in
line.''
The political science major said students were forced
during last year's general election to wait in a long line to
vote at the polling location at the local community center.
The city of Prairie View accommodates students by placing a
polling location on campus, but Waller County officials have
refused to do the same, she said.
German, the county's new registrar, could not be reached
for comment Wednesday.
[[Page S6323]]
Steen's spokeswoman, Alicia Pierce, said Steen was drafting a
letter to German.
``We don't generally determine polling locations,'' Pierce
said. ``That decision is made at the county level, but the
secretary is willing to meet with Miss Barbour. We'll be glad
to work with her.''
Gary Bledsoe, president of the NAACP state chapter, said
Waller County has a history of voter intimidation and
suppression of black voters.
Repeated complaints
The lack of polling places on campus, lost voter
registration applications and problems with ballot boxes are
among the many voting issues that have come up time and again
in the county, he said.
``Students are entitled to a voting poll on campus,''
Bledsoe said. ``They have been fighting for one for many
years. It's a righteous request.''
Barbour's action follows a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that struck down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act.
The law protects minority voters from discrimination at the
polls and, until June, required nine states with a
discriminatory history, including Texas, to get federal
approval before making changes to election laws.
The ruling gave Texas and other states the green light to
push through voter ID laws, which civil rights leaders say
will inhibit minority voting.
Prairie View has been at the center of voting right issues
as far back as the 1970s, when the U.S. attorney general
filed action against Waller County and state officials for
the use a questionnaire that denied Prairie View students the
right to vote.
In 1992, 19 students were indicted for improperly voting,
which led to a Supreme Court ruling that authorized students
to register and vote in communities where they live.
The NAACP and four students filed a federal lawsuit in 2004
after the county district attorney tried to enforce residency
requirements that would keep students from voting. Another
suit was filed around the same time after county officials
shortened the early voting period at the campus without
Justice Department approval.
The district attorney rescinded his action as part of a
settlement and county officials added an extra early voting
day on campus after being questioned by the Justice
Department.
Previous protest
In 2008, nearly 1,000 Prairie View students marched in
protest of the lack of an early voting place on campus. The
county, citing budget concerns, reduced the number of early
voting polling sites from six to one, requiring students to
walk miles to the polling location. The Justice Department
instructed county officials to add three polling sites.
Barbour said she was a apprehensive about sending her
letters but figured she had nothing to lose.
``Even if nothing's accomplished, now the tone is set,''
she said. ``I'm not the first to tackle the issue and I'm
sure I won't be the last. This gives students a chance to be
knowledgeable and take a stand.''
____________________