[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 36 (Wednesday, February 28, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1291-S1292]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING THE COORDINATED STRUGGLE OF WORKERS ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE 1968 MEMPHIS SANITATION WORKERS STRIKE TO REACH A COLLECTIVE
AGREEMENT ON WORKPLACE RIGHTS
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from
further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the
consideration of S. Res. 404.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A resolution (S. Res. 404) recognizing the coordinated
struggle of workers on the 50th anniversary of the 1968
Memphis sanitation workers strike to voice their grievances
and reach a collective agreement for rights in the workplace.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the
resolution.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate Black History
Month, when we declare that Black History is American history, and that
our Nation is a better, fairer, and more perfect union thanks to the
Black Americans who helped forge it.
Fifty years ago, in 1968, a crowd of 25,000 people gathered outside
Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, TN. They congregated there in
support of the city's 1,300 Black sanitation workers--men who were
being underpaid and subjected to abusive and unsafe working
conditions--all of whom had been protesting those conditions, day after
day, for months. The sanitation workers had organized, unionized, and
exercised their right to peaceful protest; yet the mayor of Memphis
refused to heed their calls for justice and change.
So they gathered there, alongside thousands of supporters, outside a
church in Memphis, waiting for someone to tell them--to show them--
their path forward.
One man spoke to the crowd, saying, ``You are reminding not only
Memphis, but the nation, that it is a crime for people to live in this
rich nation and receive starvation wages.'' He went on, ``You are here
tonight to demand that Memphis do something about the conditions our
brothers face, as they work day in and day out for the well-being of
the total community. You are here to demand that Memphis will see the
poor.'' The speaker encouraged the sanitation workers to continue their
fight and vowed to stand by them. He showed them their path forward.
The speaker who addressed the crowd that day was the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. His voice boomed from behind the podium to the crowd--
and to all Americans--about the intersection of racial and economic
equality. Dr. King argued that fair pay and basic dignity and safety in
the workplace should be extended to all people, regardless of their
race or profession.
Dr. King addressed the crowd on March 18, 1968. On April 3, 1968, Dr.
King addressed another crowd at Mason Temple, declaring, ``I've been to
the mountain top'' and continuing, ``Like anybody, I would like to live
a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that
now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the
mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may
not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a
people, will get to the Promised Land!''
Dr. King was assassinated the next day. Four days later, 42,000
people marched to honor Dr. King and support the strike, which was
resolved 2 weeks after Dr. King's death when the Memphis City Council
voted to recognize the sanitation workers' union. Finally, after months
of turmoil and violence, the sanitation workers were promised the
higher wages and more equitable treatment they deserved. On April 29,
[[Page S1292]]
2011, the Memphis sanitation workers were inducted into the Department
of Labor's Labor Hall of Honor.
Senator Alexander has introduced a resolution--S. Res. 404--to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation workers'
strike, and I am honored to be an original cosponsor of the measure.
Every February, we celebrate Black History Month because stories like
this one are too often lost or overlooked. Every child in America
learns about the greatness of our country: the democratic principles
that birthed us; our victories in battle throughout two World Wars; the
American ingenuity that led to the invention of the automobile, the
plane, the personal computer. But how often do our children learn about
the difficult and dark periods of our history, wherein Thomas
Jefferson's proclamation that ``all men are created equal'' was
reserved only for those with White skin? How often do they learn about
the sacrifices of those who demanded that we actually live up to the
ideals on which we were founded? How often do they learn that
greatness, equality, and justice has always come with a price in this
country--and that price has often been paid disproportionately by men
and women of color?
Black History Month is a solemn reminder of these truths. This month
is a reminder of what the Black community has long understood--that, in
the words of Frederick Douglass, ``if there is no struggle, there is no
progress.'' And it is a reminder that we all have a responsibility, to
our country and to each other, to be part of the struggle, and through
it, part of the progress.
We must rise to honor that struggle. Doing so begins with celebrating
the Americans who shouldered its burden, and Frederick Douglass is, in
fact, a tremendous example.
Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland around 1818. He learned to
read and write in Baltimore before escaping slavery. Despite unknowable
hardship and systemic discrimination, he went on to become one of the
most influential writers, orators, and abolitionists of his time.
Though Douglass fiercely and vocally opposed slavery, he would want us
to remember that he stood for the rights of all Americans regardless of
race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. These views--
revolutionary for the time--earned him increasing prominence, leading
to 1872, when Victoria Woodhull chose him as her Vice Presidential
nominee. Frederick Douglass was the first Black American ever to hold
such a title.
We also celebrate Harriet Tubman who, with sheer grit and courage,
not only escaped slavery, but dedicated her life to saving countless
men, women, and children from it. ``I had reasoned this out in my mind,
there was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death,'' she
famously said. ``If I could not have one, I would have the other.''
As one of the Underground Railroad's most effective conductors,
Harriet Tubman was given the nickname ``Moses'' for how dogged and
devoted she was to shepherding her people to safety. Tubman went on to
become a Union spy during the Civil War and an iconic suffragist
thereafter.
We celebrate scientists and inventors like Baltimore's own Benjamin
Banneker, a self-taught mathematician and astronomer, and author of
several groundbreaking almanacs; or Dr. Shirley Jackson, whose
discoveries in the field of theoretical physics paved the way for the
invention of the touch-tone telephone, solar panel cells, and fiber-
optic cable; or Marie Van Brittan Brown, a nurse by profession, who
invented the first home security system; or George Carruthers, a member
of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, who invented the ultraviolet
camera, allowing scientists at the National Aeronautics & Space
Administration, NASA, to observe more of the universe, forever changing
our perception and understanding of it.
We also celebrate the countless men and women whose names and heroism
will never grace the history books, such as the Memphis sanitation
workers. Throughout the American Revolution and the Civil War, from
Reconstruction to today, for every civil rights leader or scientist we
can name, there have been thousands we could not name.
In our eagerness to validate the importance of this month, let us not
reduce Black history to stories about individuals--as important as they
are--and forget the broader truth, that the Black community, as a
whole, deserves to have its collective story told, not just this month,
but every month. Let our history books reflect the experiences of all
those who suffered discrimination in silence, who endured civil rights
abuses without recognition, who sat in and stood up to oppression
without accolade.
Such individuals would be the first to tell us that there is a lot of
work left to do. Systemic prejudice is a specter that haunts us still
today through practices like racial profiling. I have introduced a
bill, S. 411--the End Racial and Religious Profiling Act--which would
eliminate this harmful practice and offer resources for more police
training, mandate greater accountability, and provide legal recourse
for Americans who have been unduly profiled; yet this bill remains in
the Judiciary Committee, with no hearing held on it so far, while too
many African Americans and other people of color continue to be
unjustly targeted.
The Voting Rights Act, which safeguarded every citizen's fundamental
right to vote, was upended by the Supreme Court's decision in 2013's
Shelby v. Holder. It is up to Congress to remedy that decision with a
new, updated law, and it is up to the people of this country to hold
this body accountable for passing it. For my part, I will do everything
in my power to make that a greater priority.
Fifty years after the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, the
Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, has released a deeply troubling
report, ``Teaching Hard History: American Slavery,'' which traces
today's persistent racial tensions to the failure of our schools to
teach students properly about the great stain of slavery in America.
According to the SPLC, ``Schools are not adequately teaching the
history of American slavery, educators are not sufficiently prepared to
teach it, textbooks do not have enough material about it, and--as a
result--students lack a basic knowledge of the important role it played
in shaping the United States and the impact it continues to have on
race relations in America.''
So, yes, we still have much work to do, even 155 years after the
Emancipation Proclamation and 50 years after the Memphis sanitation
workers' strike; yet Dr. King believed in us. Despite all of our faults
and shortcomings and all the hardship Dr. King witnessed and endured,
he believed in this country. We should, too. This Black History Month,
we vow not to let him--or the countless others whose names we will
never know--down. We will march forward together, united, just as those
sanitation workers and their supporters did 50 years ago, compelled by
a shared desire to see justice ``roll down like waters and
righteousness like a mighty stream,'' as the Prophet Amos put it, Amos
5:24. We will pause to reflect on the legacy of the civil rights hero
who showed us all the path forward, the man who pointed all Americans
in the direction of the Promised Land. It is up to us to reach it.
Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed
to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 404) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in the Record of
February 13, 2018, under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
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