[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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