[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 42 (Monday, March 6, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S646-S647]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Freedom to Vote Act

  Madam President, when I was a college student in 1965--there, I have 
given away my age--there was this discussion one night about getting in 
the car here, at Georgetown University in Washington, and having three 
or four of us drive down to Selma, AL, to participate in the march. 
Well, things intervened, like work schedules and classes, and we didn't 
do it, and I have regretted it ever since. I wasn't there for the March 
from Selma, which was commemorated just this past weekend with 
President Biden going to Selma, but I did get to the city of Selma, AL, 
on a fateful morning.
  Congressman John Lewis, whom I served with in the House of 
Representatives--one of the real civil rights heroes of my generation--
took a group of us down to Selma, AL. Part of the trip was to march 
over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which he had done and had almost lost 
his life in the process. At the last minute, I had to go back to 
Illinois, and I had to cancel and catch an early morning plane to take 
the trip back home.
  I told John Lewis: Maybe, next time, I will get a chance to do it.
  He said: There may not be a next time. So let's you and I go over 
there.
  We got up at 6 a.m. and drove over to Selma, AL. In the early morning 
fog, I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis by my 
side. He pointed out where he was standing when they beat him down with 
a nightstick and almost killed him. They fractured his skull.
  I have thought about that ever since. When I think of Selma, AL, I 
think of John surviving that and the amazing courage which he showed. 
It sometimes escapes us as to why that march was taking place. It 
sounds like a bunch of people who just wanted to get public attention. 
There was a lot more to the story.
  There is a woman who publishes a column almost every single day--free 
for those who want to read it. Her name is Heather Cox Richardson. I 
have come to know her a little bit. She visited our Senate Democratic 
caucus just a few weeks ago. She published a column on March 5, Sunday, 
which spoke about Selma, AL, and what was behind that march. It was all 
about registering African Americans to vote in the State of Alabama.
  ``In the 1960s,'' she wrote, ``despite the fact that Black Americans 
outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, 
Alabama, the city's voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, local 
Black organizers launched a voter registration drive.''
  `` . . . in neighboring Mississippi, Ku Klux Klan members worked with 
local law enforcement officers to murder three voting rights organizers 
and dispose of their bodies.''
  ``To try to hold back the white supremacists, Congress''--and the 
Senate and the House--``passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, designed in 
part to make it possible for Black Americans to register to vote. In 
Selma, a judge stopped voter registration meetings by prohibiting 
public gatherings of more than two people.''
  To call attention to the crisis in their city, they invited Dr. 
Martin Luther King to come to Selma.
  ``King and other prominent Black leaders arrived in January 1965, and 
for seven weeks, Black residents made a new push to register to vote.''
  The county sheriff in the Selma area, James Clark, ``arrested almost 
2,000 of them on a variety of charges, including contempt of court and 
parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to 
interfere with orderly registration.''
  There were some heroic Federal judges who risked their lives and 
reputations, and one of them was Frank Johnson. John Lewis told me 
about him as we walked over the Pettus Bridge.
  But ``a federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly 
registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for 
hours'' and subjected them to a ``literacy'' test before they were 
allowed to register to vote. Not one single person passed.
  ``Then, on February 18, white police officers, including local 
police, sheriff's deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot 
an unarmed man, 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for 
voting rights in Marion, Alabama,'' about 25 miles from Selma. 
``Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother 
when the police started rioting.''

[[Page S647]]

  But they chased him and shot him and killed him at a restaurant 
kitchen. He died 8 days later on February 26.
  ``Black leaders in Selma decided to defuse the community's anger by 
planning a long march--54 miles--from Selma to the state capitol at 
Montgomery.''
  ``On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund 
Pettus Bridge, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met 
the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas.''
  They fractured the skull of John Lewis and beat Amelia Boynton 
unconscious.
  ``A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead 
in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those 
determined to stop Black voting.''
  I tell that story about Bloody Sunday because, very often, people 
don't hear the whole story. It was just a march. What was going on? Why 
did they do all that? It involved the right to vote--the right to vote 
in America. Is there anything more fundamental? Is there anything more 
debated at this point? The Big Lie of the previous President about the 
results of the last election I hope has been debunked for most 
Americans who are open to the facts. But we still fight to make sure 
that States do not restrict the right to vote. And too many still do.
  Why do we make it so hard for residents of America to legally vote? 
It should be the easiest thing in the world. We shouldn't ask a great 
personal sacrifice on their part to achieve it.
  Heather Cox Richardson makes it a point in her column, and I wanted 
to recount it on the floor of the Senate. So as we think about Selma, 
AL, and we think on more than just that picture of people coming over 
the bridge, we think of the reason they were coming over that bridge: 
to vote, to be part of America. They have an opportunity to speak in a 
democracy. It is so fundamental. It is so basic. It is so American.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Duckworth). The Senator from Alabama.