[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 137 (Friday, August 18, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1138-E1139]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 A CHALLENGE TO THE PARTY OF LINCOLN TO TAKE A STAND AGAINST ADHERENTS 
                    AND ENABLERS OF HATEFUL IDEOLOGY

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, August 18, 2017

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in strong 
condemnation of the horrific violence and domestic terrorism that took 
place in Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend.
  The so-called ``Unite the Right'' event that precipitated this 
violence was a despicable gathering of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other 
white supremacists in a deliberate attempt to promote a hateful 
ideology and instill fear in the hearts of racial, religious, and other 
marginalized communities.
  These sorts of gatherings are, sadly, all too familiar for those of 
us who remember the days of Jim Crow and de jure segregation.
  But when these hateful events have occurred in the past, our national 
leadership rose to the occasion and at the moment of crisis summoned 
the better angels of our nature.
  When Alabama Governor George Wallace threatened to stand in the 
schoolhouse door and block enrollment of the first two African American 
students admitted to the University of Alabama, President John Kennedy 
federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce the desegregation 
order of the federal court.
  Later that evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation from the 
Oval Office on the subject of civil rights in America and said:

       We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as 
     old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American 
     Constitution.
       The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to 
     be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we 
     are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be 
     treated . . . And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its 
     boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are 
     free.

  On Sunday, March 7, 1965, more than 600 civil rights demonstrators, 
including our beloved colleague, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, 
were brutally attacked by state and local police at the Edmund Pettus 
Bridge as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in support of the right 
to vote.
  A week later, on March 15, 1965, before a joint session of the 
Congress and the eyes of the nation, President Lyndon Johnson explained 
to the nation the significance of ``Bloody Sunday'':

       I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of 
     democracy. . . .
       At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single 
     place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for 
     freedom.
       So it was at Lexington and Concord.
       So it was a century ago at Appomattox.
       So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

  ``Bloody Sunday'' was one of the defining moments in American history 
because it crystallized for the nation the necessity of enacting a 
strong and effective federal law to protect the right to vote of every 
American.
  Rising to the moment, President Johnson declared unequivocally that 
the cause of racial justice ``must be our cause too'' because it is 
incumbent on all of us to ``overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry 
and injustice.''
  President Johnson announced to the nation that he would send to 
Congress for immediate action legislation designed to eliminate illegal 
barriers to the right to vote by striking down ``restrictions to voting 
in all elections--Federal, State, and local--which have been used to 
deny Negroes the right to vote.''
  On August 6, 1965, that legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 
was signed into law by President Johnson and for the next 48 years did 
more to expand our democracy and empower racial and language minorities 
than any act of government since the Emancipation Proclamation and 
adoption of the Civil War Amendments.
  After 168 innocent people, including 19 children, were murdered on 
April 19, 1995, by a cowardly domestic terrorist who detonated a bomb 
at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, President 
William Jefferson Clinton went to Oklahoma City and consoled a grieving 
nation:

       [O]ne thing we owe those who have sacrificed is the duty to 
     purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this 
     evil. They are forces that threaten our common peace, our 
     freedom, our way of life. Let us teach our children that the 
     God of comfort is also the God of righteousness: Those who 
     trouble their own house will inherit the wind. Justice will 
     prevail.
       Let us let our own children know that we will stand against 
     the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us 
     stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, 
     let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, 
     let us honor life. As St. Paul admonished us, Let us `not be 
     overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'

   When nine African Americans were gunned down by a white supremacist 
with neo-Confederate sympathies at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in 
Charleston, it was President Barack Obama who spoke eloquently of the 
need to respond with ``big-hearted generosity'' and ``thoughtful 
introspection and self-examination.''
  In time of national tragedy, crisis, or danger, Americans look to the 
President of the United States for hope, for healing, for leadership, 
and for inspiration.
  We have blessed to have had Presidents who possessed the moral 
authority to touch and express the conscience of the nation and could 
find the words to carry us through these moments of grief and anguish.
  Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight 
Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan.

[[Page E1139]]

  But sadly, the presidential leadership we have taken for granted has 
been absent since January 20, 2017 and is nowhere to be seen in the 
aftermath of domestic terror attack that occurred in Charlottesville, 
Virginia on August 12, 2017.
  That act of domestic terrorism claimed the life of Heather Heyer, a 
32-year old paralegal who was killed for standing up to the hatred she 
saw marching on her hometown.
  Let us be clear: The President is wrong; ``many sides'' were not to 
blame for what took place in Charlottesville.
  There were the neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and white supremacists 
chanting blood-curdling slogans steeped in racism and anti-Semitism, 
and then there was everyone else.
  ``Many sides'' did not ram a vehicle at high speed into a crowd of 
innocent people, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 20 other persons; 
but a domestic terrorist and white supremacist did.
  Mr. Speaker, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists came to 
Charlottesville to advocate hate, division, and racial superiority.
  They were met by persons of goodwill who gathered to affirm racial 
unity and the equality of all persons ordained by the Creator.
  One group idolized the most evil war criminal in human history; the 
other shared and is committed to making real the dream of the Rev. Dr. 
Martin Luther King, Jr.
  It is absolutely shameful that anyone--and especially the President 
of the United States--would try to draw a moral equivalence between the 
two groups.
  If there was even a shred of hope or optimism that perhaps this 
President would recognize and temper the animus that has been unleashed 
since he announced his candidacy, that hope vanished in the wake of the 
unhinged press conference he held Tuesday, August 15, at Trump Tower in 
New York City.
  Before that date, never before in history had a President of the 
United States, the nation that led the alliance that defeated Nazism 
and fascism in the greatest conflict in world history, ever publicly 
defended or tried to normalize neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, or white 
supremacists.
   Civil action in support of racial justice is worthy of praise, and 
civil action in support of white supremacism is worthy of nothing but 
condemnation.
  I urge all Members, especially those of the Party of Lincoln, to join 
me in repudiating the President's suggestion that there is a moral 
equivalence between neo-Nazis and Klansmen advocating racial separation 
and white supremacy and protesters opposing that evil, racist ideology.
  If the President cannot recognize this difference, then it is time 
for a new President

                          ____________________