[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 27, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H1330-H1332]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  RESOLUTION HONORING THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF 
                             COLORED PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mast). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am honored tonight to present a 
resolution on behalf of the NAACP, the National Association for the 
Advancement of Colored People, a great organization founded in this 
country on February 12, 1909. It just happens to have been the 
centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
  I am honored to be a proud member of the NAACP. I hold a life 
membership, and I look forward to acquiring an even higher membership 
in the NAACP.
  I am honored to say that this resolution has the support of the 
Congressional Black Caucus, and it is a bipartisan resolution as well. 
Also, I am honored to say, Mr. Speaker, that this resolution is one 
that I hope will shed some additional light on the NAACP, its purpose, 
and some of its accomplishments.
  The NAACP is the Nation's oldest civil rights organization. It is an 
organization that was founded in a time when African Americans were 
being lynched, a time when it was not commonplace and not every place, 
but it did take place with a great degree of regularity in this 
country, such that

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African Americans were being lynched with impunity, I might add.
  It is an organization that has always been integrated. It was 
integrated from its genesis and continues to this day to be an 
integrated organization.
  Some of the notable founders of the NAACP were Mary White Ovington, a 
white female; Ida Wells-Barnett; and also, I would add, Oswald Garrison 
Villard; William English Walling. Many of these persons were persons of 
goodwill who simply concluded that there had to be something done about 
the conditions impacting African Americans. And so they decided to move 
forward, and they formed, at that time, the organization known as the 
National Negro Committee, which has, of course, evolved into the NAACP 
that we know today.
  Let me pause for a moment with the history and remind people that in 
Houston, Texas, we are very fortunate. The Houston branch of the NAACP 
has a president who is a former dean of the law school, Thurgood 
Marshall School of Law in Houston, Texas, former president of Texas 
Southern University, James Douglas--very fortunate to have a lawyer of 
his standing as the president of the NAACP.
  Currently, at the law school, there is a person who is working who 
happens to be the State president of the NAACP. We have a national 
board member in Houston, Texas. Gary Bledsoe, State president, is 
working at the law school as the interim dean. The national board 
member, Howard Jefferson, is in Houston, Texas.
  Houston's NAACP has its own facility, one of the few around the 
country to hold its own facility, but I am proud to say that that is 
something that we worked hard to acquire. The Houston NAACP is one of 
the outstanding branches of the NAACP in this country. The NAACP has 
branches in all 50 States.
  Continuing, the NAACP's national headquarters, located in Baltimore, 
Maryland, the NAACP was founded to ensure the political, educational, 
social, and economic rights of all persons and to eliminate racial 
hatred and racial discrimination.
  I am proud to say that the NAACP has always used the tactics of 
nonviolence in its movement forward, in its effort to help all persons 
benefit in this country because, quite frankly, everyone has benefited 
from the NAACP and its movement in this country. It has used 
negotiation, litigation, and protestation as its tactics.
  The NAACP was there to win lawsuits before the Supreme Court, was 
there to protest so that persons might acquire not only the right to 
vote, but also the opportunity to elect people of their choice.
  The NAACP has been there with the great litigator, Thurgood Marshall, 
who was the first African-American Justice on the Supreme Court, was 
the chief litigator for the NAACP for many years. He won 29 of 32 cases 
before the Supreme Court. He was there to fight on behalf of the NAACP.
  The NAACP is the organization that won Barrows v. Jackson, Shelley v. 
Kraemer, Brown v. Board of Education. These are lawsuits that allow us 
to live in the neighborhoods that we live in, to go to the schools that 
we attend.
  The truth be told, we eat where we eat and sleep where we sleep 
because of the NAACP. It is an organization that has brought not only 
desegregation to American life, but also integration to American life.
  Many of our institutions were desegregated. That meant that a lot of 
institutions were lost in the process when we desegregated. But we also 
have integrated, and we have brought together persons in new 
institutions.
  The NAACP can claim a good deal of responsibility for the integration 
that we see in the House of Representatives and in the Congress of the 
United States of America. I can say to you, truthfully, that I believe 
I am standing here tonight because of the good works of the NAACP, and 
a good many other persons are here because of the good works of the 
NAACP as well.
  I am also proud to tell you tonight that the NAACP has fought for the 
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 
and 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  The NAACP has fought for human rights as well as civil rights. The 
NAACP, in 2005, went beyond human rights and civil rights, in a sense, 
when it developed a disaster relief fund to help hurricane survivors in 
Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and Alabama.
  So the NAACP has metamorphosed into an organization that not only 
deals with the rights of people in the sense of their needs when they 
are voting and when they are being brought before the justice system, 
but it has also now metamorphosed into an organization that helps in 
times of need in general.
  If there is a storm, you can depend upon the NAACP to be there to be 
of some help. If persons are suffering as a result of some sort of 
disaster related to fires, the NAACP is likely to be there to help.
  The NAACP is also helping abroad. It has been there to help persons 
in Haiti after the disaster that took place.
  The NAACP, in 2008, supported the passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved 
Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. It was an act that allowed us to have 
the resources to solve some of the heinous crimes that occurred in the 
early days of the civil rights struggle here in the United States of 
America.
  The NAACP celebrated its centennial anniversary in New York City on 
July 16 of 2009.
  The NAACP continues to, in 2010, advocate for sentencing reform, 
something that is still needed to this day and is still being worked 
on.
  In 2011, the NAACP led the charge to defend the constitutional right 
to vote. The NAACP has fought voter suppression laws across the length 
and breadth of the country.
  The NAACP elected its new president, unanimously, Derrick Johnson, in 
2017.
  This organization has been on the front line for justice for all in 
the United States of America. And I would dare say that, if we did not 
have the NAACP, we would create it because we need an organization that 
is willing to step forward and take on the needs of people who, but for 
the NAACP, wouldn't have a voice.
  It is a bold organization. It does not fear the powers that be. It 
does not, in any way, concern itself with the consequences of 
challenging the establishment. It is an organization that has sought to 
change the status quo. It is an organization that moves people from 
poverty, in many cases, into an opportunity to move forward into the 
middle class. So it is an organization that truly benefits all.
  I am proud to be a member of this august organization.

                              {time}  2000

  I will mention a few more things about the organization, and then 
bring this to closure. But I do want people to know especially that the 
NAACP does not and has not ever segregated itself from any part of 
society. It has always sought to bring society together. It has always 
sought to find some sort of common ground for people to stand on so 
that we might all move forward together. It has always been an 
organization that not only wanted to integrate schools, integrate 
various parts of our social order, but also wanted to bring a sense of 
brotherhood to our country.
  Dr. King indicated that we must transform neighborhoods into 
brotherhoods. This has also been the work of the NAACP.
  Rosa Parks, the great NAACP member who took that seat on the bus and, 
in so doing, challenged the segregation in the South, the NAACP was 
there to do these things to bring people together and to help us 
understand each other.
  I do believe that America is a much better place because the NAACP 
has made it such. And if not but for the NAACP, I do believe that the 
Congress of the United States of America would not be the integrated 
institution that it is.
  I think there is still much work to be done, but I am proud that the 
NAACP has done the work that it has because, in so doing, it has made 
opportunities available for a good many people who would not have them.
  So, tonight, I wanted to have it resolved that the House of 
Representatives of the Congress of the United States of America 
recognizes the 109th anniversary of the historic founding of the 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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