[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E204-E205]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      HONORING THE NAACP FOR 108 YEARS OF REMARKABLE SERVICE AND 
               EXTRAORDINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATION

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 15, 2017

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the 108th 
anniversary of the oldest, largest, most historic and most influential 
civil rights organizations in the United States, the National 
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, known to all simply 
as the NAACP.
  The NAACP is the oldest, largest, most historic and most influential 
civil rights organizations in the United States.
  First organized in 1905, the group was known as the Niagara Movement 
when members began meeting at a hotel situated on the Canadian side of 
the Niagara Falls.

[[Page E205]]

  Members of the group had to meet in Canada because American hotels in 
Niagara Falls were segregated.
  Under the leadership of the Harvard-educated scholar, the great 
W.E.B. Du Bois, the group would later be known as the National Negro 
Committee before finally adopting the name by which it has been known 
for the last 106 years--the National Association for the Advancement of 
Colored People, or NAACP--at its second conference in 1910.
  The first official meeting was held in 1909 exactly 108 years ago 
this past Sunday: February 12, the centennial of the birth of President 
Abraham Lincoln.
  The mission of the association was clearly delineated in its charter:
  To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race 
prejudice among the citizens of the United States;
  To advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them 
impartial suffrage; and
  To increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, 
education for the children, employment according to their ability, and 
complete equality before law.
  Mr. Speaker, for more than a century, the NAACP has stayed true to 
its charter and championed the cause of justice and equality in 
America.
  It has fought valiantly and tirelessly on behalf of African-Americans 
and others to secure their civil rights and liberties and the full 
measure of justice and equality for all.
  At a time when African-Americans were treated as second-class 
citizens and the scourge of slavery was still rampant, the NAACP 
emerged to ensure that the rights, interests and voices of African-
Americans did not go unheard.
  During World War I, the NAACP successfully campaigned for African 
Americans to be commissioned as officers in the army, resulting in 
President Woodrow Wilson commissioning 600 African American officers.
  During World War II, the NAACP persuaded the administration of 
President Franklin Roosevelt to issue an executive order banning racial 
discrimination in war-related industries and federal employment.
  In 1948, President Harry Truman became the first president to 
formally address the NAACP and he worked with the NAACP in appointing a 
commission to study and offer ideas to improve civil rights and 
equality of opportunity for all persons in the United States.
  The NAACP's close relationship with President Truman helped to 
influence him to issue Executive Order 9981, which desegregated the 
United States Armed Services by announcing the new ``policy of the 
President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for 
all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, 
religion or national origin,'' and that this policy be put into effect 
as rapidly as possible.
  Mr. Speaker, the NAACP was perhaps the leading member of the ``Big 
Six''--the coalition of religious, labor and civil rights organizations 
that organized and staged on August 28, 1963 the historic March on 
Washington, the most famous act of peaceful protest in our nation's 
history.
  Other members of the Big Six were the Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference (SCLC); the National Urban League; Student Nonviolent 
Coordinating Committee (SNCC); the International Brotherhood of 
Sleeping Car Porters; and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
  The March on Washington was a seminal event in our nation's history 
and awakened Americans of goodwill to the urgent need to rededicate 
ourselves to the great unfinished task of making real the promise of 
America for all Americans, especially African Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, the current president of the NAACP is Cornell William 
Brooks and the Board Chairman is Roslyn M. Brock; through the years, 
the NAACP has been led by some of bold, visionary, and effective 
leaders, including:
  Walter White;
  Roy Wilkins;
  Benjamin Hooks;
  Benjamin Chavis;
  Merlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers;
  Kweisi Mfume;
  Bruce S. Gordon; and
  Benjamin Todd Jealous.
  Mr. Speaker, America would be a very different place were it not for 
the brilliance of the NAACP's Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., the legendary 
Director of the Washington Bureau from 1950 to 1978.
  So effective was Clarence Mitchell in the campaigns to win passage of 
civil rights laws, including the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the 1960 Civil 
Rights Act, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act of 
1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that his sobriquet was the 
``101st Senator.''
  The NAACP is perhaps best known for the practice pioneered by the 
legendary Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall of ``impact 
litigation,'' the strategy of bringing carefully selected cases to 
court to establish legal precedents of beneficially affecting 
thousands, and frequently millions, of persons beyond the immediate 
parties to the case.
  Among the historic victories won by NAACP lawyers are:
  1. 1940--Chambers v. Florida, which established that confessions 
obtained as the result of police coercion are inadmissible at trial;
  2. 1944--Smith v. Allwright, which outlawed the South's ``white 
primary'';
  3. 1948--Shelley v. Kraemer, which ruled racially restrictive 
covenants and unconstitutional and legally unenforceable'
  4. 1950--Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 
which, held that separate law and graduate school are inherently 
unequal and thus constitutional;
  5. 1954--Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, landmark case 
overruling separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson; and
  6. 1956--Browder v. Gayle, which outlawed the practice of racial 
segregation on buses and led to the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
  Mr. Speaker, as Chair for the Congressional Children's Caucus, I am 
especially concerned with fair access to quality education for today's 
youth and am personally grateful to the NAACP for its leadership in 
winning the greatest legal victory for civil rights in American 
history, the 1954 landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 
U.S. 483 (1954), in which the Supreme Court struck down de jure 
segregation in elementary schools.
  NAACP General Counsel Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the 
first African American Solicitor General and Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Court, forcefully argued and persuaded the Court to rule 
unanimously that in the field of public education, ``separate but 
equal'' was inherently unequal.
  That decision gave hope to millions of Americans that their children 
might enjoy the full promise of America that had been denied their 
forebears for more than three centuries.
  Mr. Speaker, the NAACP remains committed to achieving its goals 
through nonviolence, the legal process, and moral and political 
suasion, and through direct actions such as marches, demonstrations, 
and boycotts to give voice to the hopes and aspirations of African-
Americans and others who lack the power to make their voices heard.
  There is still a need for justice and equal treatment for African 
Americans and other vulnerable populations in our country, and 
thankfully, we still have a vibrant NAACP to advocate their cause and 
fight for their interests.
  I am grateful for the many battles for equality that the NAACP 
organization has fought and won, and thankful that the NAACP will be 
there in the future to wage the fight for justice wherever and whenever 
justice needs a champion.
  Happy 108th birthday, NAACP, and thank you for all you have done to 
make our country better.

                          ____________________