    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 39 (Thursday, February 27, 2025)]
    [House]
    [Pages H901-H905]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                  REMEMBERING HISTORY AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

      The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
    January 3, 2025, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Mfume) is recognized
    for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

                                 General Leave

      Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
    have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include
    extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order today.
      The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Haridopolos). Is there objection to the
    request of the gentleman from Maryland?
      There was no objection.
      Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about two things, one
    particularly of import and interest, because we are exiting what we
    have come to know in this country as Black History Month and the other
    more pertinent in terms of the current news and what is going on,
    particularly what has been going on over the last month and a half.
      I begin my remarks today by talking about this whole notion of
    history, why it is important, why nobody owns it, why it affects all of
    us as Americans, and why it is important to remember. In remembering,
    we tend not to make the same mistake again.

      As we officially end the month tomorrow, I wanted to take some time
    today to bring to the attention of the American public something that
    is not highlighted and very seldom ever talked about but very important
    because it was a grave injustice and a mark on our Nation's history. It
    is referred to as the Tulsa Race Massacre which occurred in the summer
    of 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
      I want to walk us back to that summer and those three nights when the
    affluent Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, often referred to then and
    now as Black Wall Street, was burned to the ground. It was totally
    burned to the ground, and 300 African-American people--men, women, and
    children--were murdered.
      It is hard to imagine that that happened in this country in just the
    last century, just a little over 100 years ago. It did, and the fact
    that it did, I think, speaks volumes about why it is so very important
    that we understand the deep hurt that took place and why we understand
    also it is really our responsibility to remember that and to make sure
    that we don't allow this Nation to creep down that dark kind of road
    again.
      That Tulsa Race Massacre, again, 300 people were murdered. It started
    with a man being falsely accused of sexual assault, a 19-year-old kid.
    On May 30, 1921, Sarah Page, a young White woman operating an elevator
    in the Drexel Building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, encountered him. He
    encountered her.
      Dick Rowland was the name of the 19-year-old Black kid. He was a
    shoeshine, a delivery boy, and worked in the Drexel Building. He was in
    that building at that time because they had a public ``colored''
    restroom facility. He came there to relieve himself, as he normally
    did.
      While there, both Rowland and Page were both in an elevator. A clerk,
    ironically a White clerk, claimed to have heard a scream and called the
    police, telling them that this kid, this 19-year-old kid, Rowland, had
    sexually assaulted the young lady.
      The police chief, whose name was John Gustafson, reported that the
    young lady bore no scratches, no bruises, no disarranged dress. The
    young woman said: No, he never made a bad remark to me of any kind.
    This is public record.
      That should be enough to negate this false claim that someone just
    yelled out of the clear blue. Despite that, charges were brought
    against the 19-year-old kid, Mr. Roland. He was arrested and then taken
    to the Tulsa courthouse.
      Later that afternoon, newspapers ran inflammatory articles hot off
    the press that suggested that the 19-year-old kid, Rowland, had
    sexually assaulted the young lady, and they ran with a story that
    stirred emotions at that time.

                                  {time}  1215

      The story was: Headline. Headline. Read all about it. Young Negro
    nabbed for attacking girl in elevator.
      Even though the girl's testimony was: He never touched me. We never
    spoke. He got on the elevator. He got off.
      Even though there was no physical evidence to the contrary, that is
    what the newspaper ran at the time.
      Worried, as most of the residents were, that this kid was going to be
    lynched, approximately 300 men met at the courthouse, and an estimated
    25 Black men also arrived at the scene to back up the sheriff who had
    sent out a plea for help. The sheriff wanted somebody there to protect
    the courthouse to ensure justice and to make sure that this kid he had
    had to take into custody was, in fact, safe.
      However, when the crowd of White men swelled to roughly 3,000 and the
    group of Black men swelled to about 75, a confrontation did not take
    place. There was a standoff at the courthouse, and the National Guard
    Armory in Tulsa opened its doors and allowed people to come in,
    citizens, to arm themselves. They just took whatever weapons they
    wanted. Then they dispersed.
      Now, if this sounds a little strange, it really, really is. This was
    104 or so years ago. It is the sort of thing that in this month where
    we talk about Black history and American history, which are both
    intertwined, it is important to say to a lot of people that this really
    happened. I am not making it up. We have got court records. There are
    newspaper records. There are reports of all sorts by those who reported
    the news. This is an American fact. It is chilling. I mean, it is sad.
    It is very, very sad.
      I don't raise it today to make anybody feel bad. I just raise it to
    say that you can't simply close the books and act like things did not
    happen, call it DEI if somebody wants to talk about it, and pretend
    that something that did happen, that was gross and so antihuman--it is
    still repulsive to pretend that it did not happen.
      For someone just tuning in right now, these are the statistics from
    that day. Again, this community, Greenwood, was known as the Black Wall
    Street at the time. It was thriving with businesses and
    entrepreneurship and commerce.
      Eighty-five of the businesses in that town owned by the Black
    population were burned to the ground. One thousand of their homes were
    set on fire and burned to the ground. As I indicated in my opening
    remarks, 300 African Americans were killed that day and the next day,
    and there were 700 people injured, overflowing the hospitals, which in
    that day and time were challenged anyway.
      The total damage was estimated to be $1.5 million, but in today's
    dollars it is $32 million plus.
      What was left of the town? Just smoldering ashes.
      Again, it is important to talk about this, because this actually
    happened. For anybody thinking that Black History Month is just a
    celebration of all the great things that Africans Americans did or
    invented or their role in the

    [[Page H902]]

    arts or in sports or anything like that, it is. It is also about the
    shame of massacres in this country, the home of the free and the land
    of the brave, and how somehow we are just supposed to cover it over and
    never believe that it happened. There is importance in remembering. The
    importance is to remember so that it never happens again.
      As I indicated, there is this standoff. The sheriff has called for
    help. He believes that this mob of 300 White men are going to storm the
    small jail, take the 19-year-old kid, and lynch him.
      The National Guard, for some reason, opened its doors so citizens can
    run in and get weapons and arm themselves.
      We don't know who fired the first shot or what happened, but we do
    know that what was to happen would be the worst race massacre in
    American history.
      Gunfire broke out between the Greenwood men and the White mob, and at
    least 20 persons fell dead right there at that first volley.
      During the shoot-out--this is from published reports. This is not
    hearsay.
      During the shoot-out, White mobs prevented the ambulances from
    treating Black men and let them lay there and die. Around the city,
    racial violence ensued, including an unarmed Black man being chased
    into the Royal Theater and then murdered viciously on the stage.
      Greenwood men fled from the courthouse because they were outnumbered
    and because they were pursued by this crazy mob of enraged men.
      Most of the Black men made it back to their side of town, preparing
    to defend their community, their wives, their children, and their
    property, which caused rumors to circulate again, rumors that ginned up
    a response that was completely out of touch with reality. It was being
    said that there was a Negro uprising and, therefore, get ready to
    protect yourself and get ready at the same time to defend your
    property, even though the property was not under assault. It was the
    property of the Black citizens there.
      Throughout the night, they were engaged in gun battles at the Frisco
    tracks. Those were the tracks that separated Black Greenwood from the
    White sections of Tulsa.
      Interestingly, many of the Black men--and you will see some of them
    in some of these photographs--donned their World War I uniforms, their
    military uniforms, the uniforms that they had worn to protect the
    Nation in segregated troops in our armed services. Those uniforms had
    hung in their closets. They put them back on to remind the mob that
    they were Americans, that they were patriots, that they had offered to
    give their lives, and so many never returned home.
      I thought that was kind of fascinating that you are being besieged;
    you are watching scores of your neighbors be murdered, lynched, burned;
    you are watching businesses being destroyed; and you still love your
    country so much that you go and get your uniform, your military
    uniform, and put it on and stand in your doorway to protect your house.
      On that same night, the police chief, the sheriff, and a judge
    requested that Governor JBA Robertson send the National Guard in so
    that they would have troops to restore order.
      Around this time, however, fires began to erupt in the town of
    Greenwood. Remember, this was called then, and it is now, the Black
    Wall Street of America. It was great commerce, great independence,
    great businesses, and great people developing a community that they
    could be proud of, that Oklahoma could be proud of, and that the Nation
    could be proud of.
      Around this time, fires began to erupt, and firefighters were
    actually threatened by the White mobs as they tried to extinguish the
    flames. They could not protect all of the homes. That is why 1,000
    homes burned down.
      They started rounding up Black civilians for them to be interred, to
    be locked up, put in jail.
      From 2 a.m. that morning until 5 a.m., members of the Tulsa Police
    Department, the National Guard, and American Legion formed mobs of
    White men into companies and made a plan to invade Greenwood at
    daybreak. They were going to end it once and for all, even though they
    had started it.
      Unlike the gun battles of the night before, this violence was more
    one sided during this invasion as it was carried out. Despite pockets
    of resistance from Black residents, they were overwhelmed, the women,
    the children, and the elderly.
      We have this crazy, crazy situation where this is happening in Tulsa,
    Oklahoma, and yet there is not a sound from the White House. Knowing
    that the National Guard has been called up, knowing by this time that
    200 Black citizens had been murdered, there is this eerie, eerie
    silence.
      The mobs carried out their terrorizing campaign. They did it with the
    old-style, early automobiles, the few that were around at the time.
    They did it with machine guns mounted on grain elevators. They did it
    as mobs, with tiki torches and knives and shotguns. They were organized
    and began methodically burning Greenwood down block by block, while
    women and children stood there watching people being set ablaze.
      It is horrific. It is the sort of thing that I really don't want to
    have to come here and talk about, but unless we tell the story of how
    we became who we are, every aspect of that story, I think we do a
    disservice to history. It is something, as I have said before, that is
    just absolutely shameful.
      Dr. A.C. Jackson, who at the time was a Black doctor and one of
    America's more prominent surgeons, a Black man, was murdered
    surrendering with his hands in the air on the steps of his porch. His
    home was then looted and burned.
      An elderly, paralyzed Black man was gunned down when he refused, when
    ordered, to stand. He couldn't stand. He was paralyzed. He was shot
    down and killed.
      These are the reports that are still in the newspapers of the time,
    those that talked about and wrote about what was happening.
      A Black double amputee was tied to the bumper of a car and dragged
    through the streets until he died and could not say anything else.
      While there was resistance, including a group of Black men fighting
    the invaders at the Mount Zion Baptist Church there in Greenwood, the
    resistance was ultimately scattered by overwhelming machine gun fire.
      As I have said before, this scene, and scenes like this, are part of
    the history that we have to pledge to ourselves that we will never,
    ever revisit.
      You can see these persons who were the last ones that did not get
    murdered. What does the headline say? ``Captured Negroes on way to
    convention hall . . . June 1, 1921.''
      It was a community of law-abiding, hardworking, successful people
    that caused Black communities around the Nation to look at Tulsa as the
    epitome of what could happen in terms of commerce and what could happen
    in terms of education and what could happen in terms of just being able
    to raise families the right way in America. That picture never returned
    to the way it was.
      People envied what was going on there until what they knew had
    happened and what we all know did happen. Again, practically every
    building in that Black community, dozens of churches, five hotels,
    three restaurants, four drug stores, eight doctor's offices, two dozen
    grocery stores, a public library, and over 1,000 homes burned to the
    ground.

                                  {time}  1230

      As I said before, this is really not something that anybody wants to
    talk about or regurgitate. It is very painful, quite frankly, when you
    read through the books of history and see this.
      My role here on the floor is not to make anybody feel bad or to shame
    anybody. I just want us to remember that this took place, to know it,
    and to not assume that things like this will never happen again. If you
    live long enough, you might see everything twice. We must pledge
    ourselves as a nation that we would never ever permit something like
    this to take place again.
      There was silence from the White House when this was happening. The
    Governor there finally got involved on the third day. Martial law was
    declared on June 1. The massacre had largely ceased by then, and the
    fires continued to smolder and burn throughout the day. That martial
    law was lifted on June 3. The National Guard left Tulsa on June 4.
      The primary role of the National Guard during the massacre was to
    arbitrarily take any and all Black men

    [[Page H903]]

    into custody, which prevented them from trying to fight the blazes that
    were burning down their own homes.
      This may also be hard to believe, but internment camps were set up at
    the Convention Hall, McNulty Park, and Tulsa County Fairgrounds. We
    didn't see internment camps again until the 1950s when Americans of
    Japanese ancestry were huddled up and locked behind bars out of a
    strange and twisted paranoid fear that they somehow would forget their
    loyalty to their new homes and their loyalty to the country that they
    loved. These were the first internment camps set up in Tulsa, and armed
    guards were placed there to oversee the 4,000 to 6,000 people who were
    detained in those camps, which were reported at the time to have
    terrible sanitary conditions and inadequate food.
      For at least a month after the massacre, African Americans needed to
    be sponsored by a White Tulsan in order to get a special ID card in
    order to leave the internment camp for 24 hours. You really just can't
    make this up.
      Without their card, those without employment were forced to work, to
    clean the city, to bury more bodies that had not been buried, and to
    live in that internment camp for almost a year, 4,000 to 6,000 people.
      It is difficult to fully confirm the number of casualties. I have
    said before the best estimates by reporters at the time and the
    newspaper were that there were 300 people killed, that many of them
    were just thrown into mass graves. It was difficult to count because
    you were not allowed out on the streets. Reports from the Red Cross at
    that time documented at least 700 injuries, people who lost their eyes,
    lost their limbs, had their fingers cut off.
      These sights, these sounds, and these horrors that I have just
    described bear a resemblance to an apocalyptic war zone, quite frankly,
    but it wasn't a war zone. It was the country that we love. ``My
    country, tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.'' It was devilish
    destruction that took place.
      I want to put up these numbers again for somebody just tuning in and
    asking what I am talking about. I am using the end of Black History
    Month, again, not to sing flowery songs or to talk about great
    achievements within the African-American community because we do that
    throughout the year, but to talk about a pain that continues to burn in
    the hearts of people who had to go through that, and to remind all of
    us that this really did happen.
      In 1921, Oklahoma impaneled a grand jury that subpoenaed 200
    witnesses and returned 70 indictments, interestingly enough, mostly
    against Black people in the community who were the victims of the riot
    and victims of the massacre. Appallingly, the only people ever accused
    and the only people to go to prison were the Black people of that
    community.
      The grand jury deemed that the massacre was a riot and blamed it on
    Black men who went to the courthouse that night at the request of the
    sheriff to help protect the courthouse and to help keep mobs from
    lynching the young 19-year-old kid who was there and had been falsely
    accused.
      Tulsa's Public Welfare Board was formed to handle the rebuilding--
    remember, this was 1921--which was replaced by Tulsa's then-mayor, T.D.
    Evans, with a reconstruction committee. In his speech announcing the
    committee, Mayor Evans again blamed the riot on the Black people of
    Greenwood and suggested that the land should be redeveloped for
    industrial purposes.
      Remember, this was Black Wall Street at the time, the envy of
    communities around the country, the model of self-initiatives,
    discipline, and citizenship, but the mayor said it ought to be
    redeveloped for industrial purposes.
      Seated on the committee that granted his wish were individuals that
    included the likes of Tate Brady, who was a wealthy White landowner who
    was also later identified in several reports as a leading Klansman.
      The city tried to force survivors out of Greenwood by passing a new
    fire ordinance that made rebuilding extremely expensive. Even though
    your house had been burned down, you would think the government would
    try to help you, but they made it more expensive since so many homes of
    the 1,000 that had been burned never got rebuilt.
      A year later, in September 1921, an African-American attorney named
    Buck Colbert Franklin secured a permanent injunction against that
    ordinance, even though many had already been arrested for simply trying
    to rebuild their homes.
      The FBI got involved, and a gentleman by the name of T.F. Weiss, a
    special agent, was leading up this effort. The FBI's predecessor agency
    was also sent at that time to investigate whether crimes had taken
    place during the riot--whether crimes had taken place.
      We have a complete onslaught of violence that carries over for 3 days
    where 300 people are murdered while living in the community that they
    helped to build, where all of their businesses are burned to the
    ground, where 1,000 homes are totally destroyed, where the cost and the
    estimate was more than the State of Oklahoma even wanted to think
    about. Yet, in Agent Weiss' own report, he makes mention that, on the
    night of May 31, a police officer had recruited men from nearby towns
    to join in the raid that would take place the next morning, which
    should have been evidence itself of preplanning, but the report was
    never turned in. Agent Weiss took less than a week to complete his
    interviews and write a report, which may have never been reviewed by an
    individual at the Justice Department.

      In the halls of our judicial system, victims and descendants
    desperately continued to seek some form of redress, and they were all
    met with similar blockades.
      In September 1926, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that insurance
    companies could not be sued for the damages that took place as a result
    of the massacre. You pay your insurance year after year. After you have
    built your own house and lived there with your family and somebody
    burns it down, you go to whatever the insurance company was at the time
    to try to seek some relief, but the Supreme Court in Oklahoma ruled
    that those insurance companies didn't have to do a damn thing, nothing.
      Residents tried to sue Mayor Evans. They tried to sue the Tulsa
    police and others throughout the decade of the 1920s. All of those
    lawsuits, all of them, were dismissed.
      In 2003, survivors and descendants of Tulsa alleging civil rights
    violations and a denial of equal protection in the case of Alexander v.
    Oklahoma began a process that gets us closer to where we are today.
    There were descendants.
      In fact, there were two women who both, I believe, are 105 or 106
    years of age who fought this. They never stopped trying. They never
    gave up. They were the last group of survivors. They brought their case
    all the way to the Supreme Court. These are the witnesses who saw 300
    people murdered, 1,000 homes destroyed, 85 businesses destroyed. They
    held on some sort of way because they believed, as they said, that they
    had to tell the story before they died because no one else wanted to
    tell the story. It is unbelievable.
      In June of last year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the case,
    finding that the plaintiffs did not have legitimate grievances or that
    their grievances did not fall within the scope of the law that they
    sought to utilize.
      This is just absolutely amazing. I don't know what it would have been
    like to hold on all those many years with a nightmare of a story in
    your gut and in your belly, with the crying and the pain and the
    violence that you witnessed as a young person, but they held on. They
    held on.
      In 2010, just a decade before the Supreme Court of Oklahoma's
    decision, the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation was opened
    in Tulsa. That center was established to foster dialogue about
    historical and racial violence and the lingering effects that it has on
    people and how they find that pain and promote healing.
      That is why this story is so interesting. Mrs. Viola Ford Fletcher
    and Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle never stopped believing that their
    country would, in fact, correct a wrong that had gone on so long.
      God only knows that when they leave this planet for their eternal
    rest, we have to carry on with their belief that there will be a
    reckoning, that there will be reconciliation, and that there will be a
    need to tell the story, not to make anybody feel bad but to make
    everybody more committed to the fact

    [[Page H904]]

    that we have to be one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty for
    all.

                                  {time}  1245

      I don't want to belabor the point, so I won't. I can just tell you,
    Mr. Speaker, that I have lived long enough to know that difficulties
    between groups in our society are not novel nor are they new but that
    our approach to those differences must be both.
      For more than 200 years we have joined together different colors,
    different creeds, and different nationalities, all under that one flag,
    and while this assembled diversity has produced the most successful
    experience of democracy in the world's history, we have by no means
    clearly achieved perfect harmony.
      Slavery was allowed to exist legally for almost 200 years. Crosses
    were burned to terrorize people in an ugly desecration of the symbol of
    love. Just a century ago, Protestants and Catholics battled in the
    streets of New York City, and on that day 44 Catholics were killed. At
    the end of the decade of the 1930s, a ship by the name of the St. Louis
    with a human cargo of Jewish men and Jewish women was denied safe
    harbor in this, the land of the free and the home of the brave and sent
    back to a madman named Hitler.
      At the beginning of World War II, as I mentioned earlier, Japanese
    Americans were huddled up and placed behind bars in internment camps
    out of the fear that they somehow would forget their loyalty to their
    new home.
      After the attacks of 9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans were set upon
    and beaten in the streets of America--lest we ever forget, by angry men
    who formed mobs of their own--because their religion and because their
    ethnicity were deemed to be a threat to the land that they professed to
    love.
      There have been times that we have sought as a Nation to ban the
    teaching of foreign language and to slam shut the doors of elementary
    schools simply because they were sponsored by religious groups. There
    have been occasions and there have been periods where our differences
    of race, our differences of religion, and our differences of
    nationality have produced an ugly alienation instead of producing
    harmony.
      Nevertheless, as I prepare to conclude this portion of my remarks,
    let me remind all of us that there are still yet other differences: The
    difference between the people who have and the people who have not.
      The difference between the people in this room, Members of the United
    States Congress, you and I, and the millions of people in this country
    who at this hour are out of work or working at jobs that provide them
    with a scant living and no real dignity.
      The difference between us, you and I, on one hand, living as we do in
    relative comfort and the millions of people in the streets across
    America torn by the terrible pain of drug addiction.
      The difference between us and the illiterates.
      The difference between us and the homeless.
      The difference between our child parents and the 15-year-olds in
    towns and communities across this Nation, who at this hour are about to
    have children of their own, creating a situation where they are lost,
    unprepared, and doomed to raising another generation of disadvantaged
    children.
      Those differences produce frustration, and they produce anger.
    America at her best has always treated those differences with a blend
    of common sense and compassion. America at her worst has treated such
    differences with the empty evenhandedness of Marie Antoinette: Just let
    them eat cake. We can't be bothered.
      Yet we know that this is not a perfect nation and we are not perfect
    people, but God calls all of us to a perfect mission. Whether we are
    Christian, Jew, Muslim or something else, it is still a mission to feed
    the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, teach the illiterate,
    provide guidance to our young, and security to our seniors.
      Part of that guidance means remembering the stony road that we
    charred to get to where we are here in 2025, by remembering something
    as painful even as the Tulsa race massacre, which I have tried to talk
    about now over and over again, and to remember committing ourselves and
    promising those who have gone before us and those who will come after
    us that we will never allow something like that to happen again.
      I have not given up on the American Dream or the American
    possibility, and I have come to the floor tonight to ask people around
    this country not to give up also. I am convinced that this Nation still
    stands before the world as perhaps the last expression of a possibility
    of mankind, devising a social order where justice is the supreme ruler
    and law is but its instrument, where freedom is the dominant creed and
    order is but its principle, where equity--equity--is the common
    practice and fraternity the true human condition.
      It is also my conviction that we may be the last generation of
    Americans who has the opportunity to help our Nation totally fulfill
    that promise and to realize that still-yet-to-achieve possibility.
      So, Mr. Speaker, again, I call our attention to the matter of the
    Tulsa race massacre as we conclude Black History Month tomorrow, but
    this could be December. It doesn't matter. It is something we have to
    not hide in books and say: Those books are banned; and tell a
    generation of young people: You can't read this, you don't need to know
    that.
      Again, we have to use it in an instructive way to talk about how far
    we have come since then and why we must do more and why something like
    that can't take place.
      I am going to talk a bit just briefly about this whole situation that
    we are facing, regrettably, with people being laid off and fired and
    being asked: What did you do last week?
      I do want to make sure that my colleague, the distinguished gentleman
    from Alabama, has an opportunity to come forward and make another very
    important point.
      Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Figures).
      Mr. FIGURES. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Mfume for yielding.
      Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a question similar to many of the
    questions we just heard the distinguished gentleman from Maryland raise
    as it relates to historical events that happened across the country,
    particularly in Tulsa, but it is a question that gets to the core of
    what he is saying, and that is: Who are we as Americans?

      Who are we as a nation?
      Who are we as a people?
      In the flurry of activity that comes out of this administration and
    that comes out of the White House it is easy to overlook certain things
    that the administration is doing that are impacting people whom we may
    not see every day that we may not even know. One of those unfortunate
    occurrences happened late last week when the administration decided to
    revoke the temporary protected status of half a million people who are
    in the Nation legally from the nation of Haiti.
      Now, the TPS program, the temporary protected status program, is
    specifically designed to provide temporary status, legal status--not
    permanent status, not citizenship, but temporary status--to people who
    are from nations who find themselves in situations similar to what is
    going on in Haiti right now, where they are wrapped in a situation of a
    destabilized government, a not-too-long-ago assassinated President, a
    situation where gangs are literally controlling large swaths of the
    country, over 85 percent of the capital city. It is not safe for people
    to be pushed back into those environments.
      This is one that is personal to me because I have had the privilege
    in life to have met a man named Gerald Dessources who came to this
    country from the nation of Haiti. He worked his way through college,
    refined his English by listening to Sesame Street and by listening to
    Martin Luther King's speeches. He went on to become an engineer at a
    Fortune 500 company here in the United States in New York.
      I have had the privilege to get to know a woman from Haiti by the
    name of Katlyn Dessources, who immigrated here as a young child
    following her mother who was pursuing that American Dream of making
    life better for her children. She too worked her way through to her
    American Dream. She has been a healthcare worker for decades.
      The two of them, Gerald and Katlyn, it didn't stop with them. Those
    same values they brought with them, that same dream that they brought
    with

    [[Page H905]]

    them from the country of Haiti, they instilled that in their children,
    their four daughters, one of whom is a schoolteacher, one of whom is a
    speech pathologist, one of whom is an Ivy-League-educated gynecological
    oncologist in North Carolina, and the fourth of whom holds four
    different degrees from three different Ivy League schools, and I have
    the privilege of calling her my wife and the mother of our children.
      They come from Haiti. They are evidence of what Haitians have
    produced for this country and contributed to this country.
      For us as America to ignore the current conditions of what is
    happening in Haiti, to turn our backs on people who need us most, this
    is a Nation that prides itself on being that beacon of hope. This is a
    Nation where when you look at one of our most famous landmarks, the
    Statue of Liberty, it says: ``Give me your tired, your poor, your
    huddled masses yearning to breathe free.''
      However, by ignoring the conditions that are currently present in
    Haiti, we are not living up to that model. We are not living up to that
    creed. What we are doing is sending people back to an environment where
    they are certain to meet ends that we would not wish on anybody.
      We see the reports of gang violence in the streets. We see the
    reports of women being raped. We see the reports of children being
    forced to partake in armed conflict. We see the reports of food
    insecurity. We see the reports of people who no longer own the homes
    that they left because they are now under the control of armed gangs.
    We see the reports that Haiti doesn't have a police force that can
    protect its people. They don't have a military force that can protect
    its people.
      Yet, we are sending people back to that environment. It is not safe,
    and it is not the right thing to do. There are ways to lead with
    strength but decency. There are ways to enforce the law in a manner
    that recognizes reality and exudes compassion.
      This is not that. This is not who we are as Americans. We can do so
    much better than this. We can be that place of refuge. We can be that
    place that America and the world still look up to as standing up for
    people who need us most.
      Again, TPS is not about permanent citizenship. This is about a
    temporary place for people to be safe from gun violence and armed
    conflicts, from being kidnapped and held for ransom. That is what will
    surely happen to some of the people who are returned back to Haiti.
      These are people who are a proud people and who are a hardworking
    people. My wife's family is just one example of that. They are just one
    example. There are millions of Haitian Americans who make vital
    contributions to this country every single day. For us to turn our
    backs on them now is simply not right. It is indecent. It is inhumane.
    Quite frankly, it is un-American.
      So, Mr. Speaker, I urge, I plead, and I beg of the White House to
    reconsider its restriction on TPS and extend the protection for the
    Haitians who are in America.

                                  {time}  1300

      Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is
    remaining.
      The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Maryland has 9 minutes
    remaining.
      Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I associate myself with the remarks from the
    distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Figures) and to also urge the
    White House to move forthwith on that request and other similar
    requests.
      I will say a couple of words before I conclude. The matter of the
    Tulsa Race Massacre was very important. I hope that, to the extent that
    anybody paid attention, that it makes a difference in terms of trying
    to remember how far we have come and why we can't, in fact, go back.
      I simply also indicate that it is my intention to come back onto the
    floor next week to spend time again on the matter of the mass layoffs
    and firings that have been taking place that are affecting Federal
    workers throughout this country, 80 percent of whom are outside of
    Washington, D.C., and many of whom are in my State of Maryland and the
    city of Baltimore.
      I will again urge some sort of prudence. I think most people will
    agree that we all want to do away with waste, fraud, and abuse.
      I am the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Government Operations
    and the Federal Workforce, which has been doing just that for the last
    2 or 3 years. The committee has been identifying it and trying to make
    sure that we, in fact, come to grips with it.
      I think the thing that concerns most Americans has been the speed and
    the surgical way that people have been cut out of employment,
    oftentimes without any kind of review. It is wrong. I have said it over
    and over again, and I think most people now are starting to recognize
    that ``due process'' is more than just 2 words. It is a way that we
    have to move forward.
      It doesn't mean stopping anything, but it does mean affording people
    the courtesy of a process, and I would strongly urge Members of this
    body to keep that in mind as we go forward.
      Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Figures) for his
    comments, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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