[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 151 (Thursday, September 19, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       HONORING FANNIE LOU HAMER, ANNIE DEVINE, AND VICTORIA GRAY

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 19, 2019

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Madam Speaker, I rise today to highlight 
remarkable historical activists, Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and 
Victoria Gray.
  Coming on the heels of its historic challenge to the seating of the 
all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National 
Convention in Atlantic City, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 
(MFDP) moved to unseat Mississippi's all-white Congressional delegation 
the next year. The MFDP revealed how continued illegal discrimination 
led to the election of five white men to represent a state, where the 
population was nearly half African American. Through its Freedom 
Elections, open to anyone regardless of race, the MFDP proved that 
black voters would exercise their constitutional rights if given the 
chance and that their votes would undermine Jim Crow politics in 
America. The MFDP took its challenge all the way to the U.S. House of 
Representatives.
  In December 1964, MFDP attorneys not only rejected the seating of the 
men who comprised the Mississippi delegation ahead of the 1965 
Congressional session but asserted that Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, 
and Victoria Gray should be seated in their stead in their own 
respective districts. These three black women were long-time civil 
rights activists and MFPD stalwarts and had attempted to run for 
Congress in the Fall of 1964. After they were denied a place on the 
official Mississippi ballot, Hamer, Devine, and Gray were elected 
through the MFDP Freedom Vote. Though it had no recognized legal 
standing, the Freedom Vote was the only true democratic election in 
Mississippi. Thus, the MFDP argued that these women were entitled to 
the state's Congressional seats in their districts as the only 
democratically elected officials from the state.
  On January 3, 1965, Hamer, Devine, Gray, and more than 600 other 
black Mississippians welcomed members of Congress to the Capitol in 
support of the MFDP challenge. When Speaker of the House John McCormack 
began the traditional roll call, Congressman William Fitts Ryan of New 
York objected to the seating of Mississippi's Thomas Abernethy. More 
than sixty U.S. Representatives joined Ryan in that dissent and forced 
McCormack to wait to seat the entire Mississippi delegation until the 
rest of Congress had been sworn in. Then, House Majority Leader Carl 
Albert of Oklahoma moved that the MFDP challenge be recognized as 
legitimate and that Mississippi's all-white delegation be seated until 
a full hearing could be conducted. Albert's Resolution passed the House 
by a vote of 276 to 149. With two-thirds of U.S. Congressmen supporting 
the right to a challenge, the Committee on House Administration 
prepared to hear the MFDP's arguments.
  The state's segregationist delegation employed an army of white 
attorneys, recruited at the behest of the Mississippi Bar Association, 
to mount their defense during the summer of 1965, but the MFDP 
organized dozens of volunteer lawyers from across the country to 
prepare its case. They issued subpoenas, conducted depositions, and 
gathered testimony from black voters about the discrimination they had 
encountered in the state for decades. Backed by hundreds of pages of 
documents in support of the challenge, the MFDP was prepared for a 
hearing to be held in the Fall of 1965.
  When the MFDP challenge was finally heard on September 13, 1965, 
Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray testified in front of 
the House Subcommittee on Elections that they had been denied access to 
the ballot because of their race and should be seated to represent the 
State of Mississippi in Congress. Three days later, their challenge 
came to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote, and 
Congressman Ryan of New York, who had first stood to object to the 
seating of the all-white delegation in January, accompanied the three 
women to sit on the House floor with Congressional Democrats during the 
debate. Their presence made them the first black women on the floor of 
the U.S. House of Representatives and the first black Mississippians 
there since Reconstruction. Undaunted by the vitriol they had faced, 
Annie Devine, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Victoria Gray sat nobly through the 
deliberations.
  Although a vote of 228-143 defeated the MFPD challenge, nearly 40 
percent of Congressmen had gone on record in support of Hamer, Devine, 
and Gray. A month before their challenge was heard, the 1965 Voting 
Rights Act had passed, which many members of Congress believed had 
rectified the inequities that the MFDP described, and those Congressmen 
did not believe they should act on behalf of the MFDP in the name of 
past discrimination. Nevertheless, the heroic efforts of Hamer, Devine, 
Gray, and the MFDP proved that African Americans would not sit idly by 
but would demand their rights of American citizenship. These three 
women fought to throw open the doors that eventually saw Shirley 
Chisholm from New York elected as the first black woman to Congress in 
1968, Mike Espy as the first black Mississippian since Reconstruction 
to serve in Congress in 1987, and the election of the first African 
American President of the United States, Barack Obama. We honor them 
for their courage and sacrifice.
  Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing 
Jacqueline Hamer-Flakes, Pastor Cecil Gray, Julie Henderson, Reuben 
Adams, Nettsaanett Gray, Barbara Devine Reed, Tiffany Wilson, William 
Ryan, Mary Carroll (Mac) Ryan, and Elizabeth Ryan as we reflect on the 
contributions of Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray to 
their families, communities, and their driving passion to fight for 
Civil Rights.

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