[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 33 (Monday, February 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S757-S758]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Black History Month

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday would have been John Lewis's 
81st birthday. That a fearless young man, who was threatened, jailed, 
beaten half to death so many times for the cause of love and justice, 
actually lived to reach the age of 80 seems like a miracle.
  Now, as America celebrates our first Black History Month since his 
passing, we miss him, but we still have the moral force of his message. 
John made sure of that. Two days before he died, he wrote an essay for 
the New York Times. He asked the paper to print his words on the day of 
his funeral--of his ``homegoing,'' as he said. It was his last message 
to America.

[[Page S758]]

  In his essay John Lewis recalled how, when he was a little boy in 
Alabama, the threat of White supremacist violence and government-
sanctioned terror was a fact of everyday life.
  He also remembered the moment that changed his life: hearing a young 
minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., on the radio. From Dr. King's 
sermons he learned about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. 
He also learned that when we tolerate injustice, we are complicit.
  When we see something that is wrong, he wrote, ``each of us has a 
moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out.''
  John Lewis spent the next 65 years on Earth following Dr. King's 
teachings. I never met anyone in my life so unshakably committed to 
nonviolence and the transformative power of love.

  There was another person who inspired John Lewis to spend his life 
getting into what he called ``good trouble.'' He said he was inspired 
into the movement to end America's brutal history of race 
discrimination by the brutal death of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 
1955. When Emmett Till was brutally murdered for supposedly whistling 
at a White woman, he was only 14 years old. John Lewis was 15.
  Emmett Till had traveled to Mississippi that summer to visit 
relatives from his home on the South Side of Chicago. When his body was 
returned to his grieving mother, Mamie Till, she made a decision that 
changed the world. She demanded that her son's coffin remain open at 
his funeral so that the world could see what hatred and racism had done 
to her only child.
  Emmitt Till's murder and Mamie Till's courage launched the civil 
rights movement of the mid-20th century. It was one of the greatest 
periods of racial reckoning in our Nation's history. Just 3 months 
later, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL, bus. 
She said that she thought of Emmett Till, and that courage covered her 
like a quilted blanket.
  Earlier this month, the city of Chicago designated the home in which 
Emmett and Mamie Till lived as a city historical site. There are plans 
to preserve it as a museum.
  Five years ago, the Smithsonian Museum of African American History 
and Culture opened in Washington, DC. It represents America's first 
official attempt to tell the story of African Americans. But you don't 
have to go to a museum to see evidence of racial injustice in America 
or to see people bravely getting into ``good trouble'' for justice. You 
see that all around us.
  Nine days before he died, weak from his chemo treatment, John Lewis 
made his last public appearance at the newly renamed Black Lives Matter 
Plaza in front of the White House. He explained the reason for his 
visit in his final letter to America. It begins with these words: 
``While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in 
the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with 
hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used 
your power to make a difference in our society.''
  Lewis went on: ``That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza 
in Washington. . . . I just had to see and feel it for myself that, 
after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.''
  John Lewis drew a direct line from the civil rights movement to the 
Black Lives Matter protest of today, and he said: ``Emmett Till was my 
George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna 
Taylor.''
  As we celebrate this month, we can see the ravages of racial 
injustice in this pandemic, which has hit our Black and Brown brothers 
and sisters with a disproportionate ferocity. African Americans still 
live sicker and die younger in America. The average Black family still 
possesses only a fraction of the wealth of White families, even after a 
lifetime of backbreaking work. African Americans still face voter 
suppression and intimidation a half-century after John Lewis fought for 
voting rights.
  Just weeks ago, White nationalists helped lead an armed insurrection 
against our democracy, and a man in that mob paraded a Confederate 
battle flag through the halls of this Capitol. We have work to do.
  Truly, we have things to celebrate. Black history in America is a 
record of brutal subjugation, racial violence, and discrimination, but 
it is also the story of resilient people who survived those horrors and 
created a rich and vibrant culture. From Crispus Attucks, the first 
American who gave his life in the Revolutionary War, to Officer Eugene 
Goodman, one of the heroes in the January 6 insurrection; from 
Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman to Vice President Kamala Harris; 
from the enslaved people who built this Capitol and the White House to 
Barack Obama, our first Black President; from John Lewis, the youngest 
speaker at the March on Washington, to Amanda Gordon, the youngest 
inaugural poet in our Nation's history, African Americans have enriched 
America in every field of thought and every walk of life and made us 
freer, more prosperous, and truer to our founding promises. I celebrate 
Black History Month.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa