[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 36 (Thursday, February 25, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S882-S883]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Remembering Vicki Miles-LaGrange

  Mr. President, I did mention that in 1986 she was one of two ladies 
who were African American who were elected in the State senate that 
year--the first ladies who were African American to be elected into our 
State senate. The other lady was a dear friend, Vicki Miles-LaGrange. 
She is younger. She was born in 1953 in a segregated hospital in 
Oklahoma City.
  She grew up in a loving home with her parents and older sister. Her 
parents were well-respected educators in Oklahoma City. They both got 
their master's degrees from the University of Oklahoma in 1955, just 7 
years after Ada Lois Sipuel won her case at the Supreme Court to allow 
Black Oklahomans to even attend the University of Oklahoma.
  As a young girl, she was interested in government. And when her 
friend's mother, Hannah Atkins, decided to run for the Oklahoma House 
of Representatives, Vicki helped out, even as a teenager. She became 
what they put together called Hannah's Helpers, a group of young people 
who campaigned for Hannah Atkins. And Atkins won her race and became 
the first Black female to serve in the Oklahoma House of 
Representatives.
  Vicki attended McGuinness High School. She stayed involved in a 
little bit of politics there, participating in Girls State. Asking a 
mutual friend, Patrick McGuigan, who I am convinced had a crush on her 
when they were in high school--asking Patrick about that time, he 
recounts the stories and has written even in some of his writings about 
how Vicki went to Girls State and was elected governor of the Oklahoma 
Girls State Program that year, but when the sponsoring organization 
decided who they were going to send to Girls Nation, they for the first 
time did not send the governor; they chose to send the lieutenant 
governor. That is what Vicki faced as she grew up.
  She attended Vassar College, and at 18 became a delegate at the 
Democratic Oklahoma State Convention. It was there that she met Carl 
Albert, who told her that if she ever ended up in DC to look him up and 
to come work for him. Well, that is all you would have to tell Vicki. 
She attended Howard University Law School, walked right into the 
Speaker of the House's office one day here at the Capitol and convinced 
Carl Albert that he should remember his offer, and she became an intern 
in his office immediately while she pursued her law degree.
  This was not an unusual thing for Vicki. After graduating law school, 
she clerked for a Federal judge in Houston, joined the criminal 
division of the Department of Justice, where she helped prosecute Nazi 
war criminals.
  In 1983, she decided she wanted to return to Oklahoma. So she 
returned, though she was rejected for an office in the U.S. Attorney's 
Office--ironic because later she became the U.S. attorney for the 
Western District. She walked right into the district attorney's office, 
Bob Macy's office, resume in hand, no appointment, and asked to be able 
to speak with him. And she waited outside of his office until he came 
out of his office. He came out for lunch and walked out with a job 
offer after that.
  In 1986, she decided to run for State senate. This was the same year 
Maxine ran as well. Her dad, a former industrial arts teacher, helped 
fix up her campaign headquarters. Her mother and her mother's best 
friend were her campaign managers, and she won that race and unseated 
Senator Porter, a 22-year incumbent.
  When you look at Vicki's life, there are a lot of firsts. Along with 
Maxine Horner, she was the first African-American female to be elected 
to the Oklahoma State Senate. In 1993, she became the first African-
American woman to become the U.S. attorney for the Western District of 
Oklahoma. A year later, in 1994, President Clinton appointed her to be 
the U.S. district judge for the Western District of Oklahoma. She was 
the first African-American Federal judge among the six States that make 
up the Tenth Circuit of that Federal jurisdiction.
  She was appointed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the U.S. 
Supreme Court as a member of the International Judicial Relations 
Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
  Shortly after, when she became a Federal judge, the horrific genocide 
unfolded in Rwanda. Vicki advocated for an independent judiciary in 
Rwanda and was part of a group of international legal experts who were 
sent to Rwanda to help reform the system. She made eight trips to 
Rwanda at her own personal risk. In 2006, she was awarded the Fern 
Holland Courageous Lawyer Award from the Oklahoma Bar Association.
  In 2013, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the highest 
honor an Oklahoman can receive for their contributions to the State.
  She received many other awards, including the Oklahoma Bar 
Association's Women Trailblazer Award.
  In the early 1960s, she was so inspired by President Kennedy's 
inaugural address that she wrote to him to say how happy she was that 
he was President. One of his advisers actually wrote her a letter back. 
She kept that letter, and, in fact, she hung it in her office while she 
was a judge. She was quoted as saying that, above all else, she is a 
career public servant. There was a newspaper article when she took her 
very last case in 2018 as a Federal judge, and it quoted back to 1994 
when she was in front of this Senate for confirmation hearings, being 
the first African-American judge ever in the Tenth Circuit. And she 
said this:

       My race will not determine my decisions.

  She said: I don't want to be known as a good Black judge. I want to 
be a respected and good and fair judge.
  Vicki Miles-LaGrange, that is exactly how we remember you.
  Oklahoma is proud of these two ladies and what they have done. We are

[[Page S883]]

proud to call them fellow Oklahomans in the trailblazing that they have 
done.
  Thanks for your leadership
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, we are all representative of heroes and 
idols and, clearly, my colleague from Oklahoma appoints several out 
from his home State.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I complete my remarks 
before we go to the vote this afternoon.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.