[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 129 (Thursday, July 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5035-S5036]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REMEMBERING MacNOLIA COX

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, earlier this month, Zaila Avant-garde 
became the first Black American to win the Scripps National Spelling 
Bee. It is kind of discouraging in the year 2021 that barrier still 
needed breaking.
  Her achievement is an inspiration for so many students around the 
country. She drew strength and courage from another trailblazer who had 
gotten significant less attention, whose story has not been told and 
honored the way that Zaila was.
  In 1936, 13-year-old MacNolia Cox from Akron, OH, became one of the 
first two Black students to compete in the National Spelling Bee. She 
qualified after winning the regional competition that went 60--6-0--
rounds, sponsored by the Akron Beacon Journal. Black communities across 
the country cheered her victory. They looked forward to her joining the 
national competition. She was celebrated at churches and clubs, talked 
about by celebrities, and even politicians. At the RKO Palace in 
Cleveland, band leader Fats Waller, tap dancer Bill Robinson, whom we 
know, whom history knows as Mr. Bojangles, brought her on stage.
  Three thousand Ohioans came to Akron's Union Station to send MacNolia 
off on her journey to Washington. She had little idea the treatment she 
would endure at the tip of the Jim Crow South. She was forced to ride--
she is, essentially, Ohio's representative at the National Spelling 
Bee, a 13-year-old Black--I was going to say Black young woman--Black 
girl from Ohio. She was forced to ride in segregated train cars. She 
was forced to stay at a private home instead of at the Willard hotel.
  Nine years later, my parents--my dad came from overseas, my mom from 
Mansfield, GA--met at the Willard hotel at the end of his service in 
World War II.
  She could not stay at the Willard hotel because she was African 
American, while all the other White competitors did. At a dinner for 
the finalists, she and her mother were forced to enter through the 
kitchen door of the hotel and sit at a separate table segregated from 
the other finalists. How shameful that was.
  Despite it all, MacNolia Cox made it far in the competition. There 
were only five students left when the judges gave her a proper noun to 
spell. She hadn't studied it. Proper nouns were supposed to be off 
limits. The judges had had enough of a Black girl getting that far. 
They wouldn't listen to the Beacon Journal reporter, who covered her to 
report on the competition. She pointed out to the judges that the 
judges--the judges--weren't following their own rules. She was 
eliminated. Of course, she was. Her achievements, her story soon faded 
from memory until now.
  Zaila Avant-garde talked to the media about scrolling through 
pictures of national spelling bee contestants with her father, seeing 
face after face that didn't look like hers.
  It reminds me, yesterday, I had breakfast with the Secretary of the 
Treasury at the Treasury Department. To get to her office--her office, 
``her,'' I reiterate--you walk down a long, long, long hallway. Every 
picture in the hallway are people who look like me. They were 
Secretaries of the

[[Page S5036]]

Treasury. Every single Secretary of the Treasury, until Janet Yellen, 
looked like--well, older, certainly, than the Presiding Officer--but 
looked like we do.
  She saw MacNolia Cox's face, and she learned her story as she was 
looking through these. She told reporters when she was competing, she 
thought of MacNolia. She thought about what she had endured 85 years 
earlier.
  Now, more Americans are learning both of their stories. More kids are 
seeing themselves in the faces of champions. That is why Black history 
matters. It matters in the classroom. It matters in movies. It matters 
on the Senate floor. It matters in books. It matters in TV shows. It 
matters in the national news. It is how we shine a light on the 
injustices students like MacNolia and Zaila had to overcome and work to 
fight them.
  It is how we show kids that these are dreams--these aren't dreams 
only for certain kids who look a certain way. These dreams, these 
aspirations, these achievements in 21st century America should be for 
everyone.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Akron's MacNolia Cox, and 
even more importantly, telling her story for future generations

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