[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 30 (Thursday, February 12, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H2211-H2215]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BLACK HISTORY: STOLEN LEGACIES
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Green
of Texas was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.)
Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, a proud,
liberated, unbought, unbossed, and unafraid Democrat.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today because this is Black History Month, and I
have been accorded the honor of presenting annually the original Black
history resolution.
I am proud to do this in concert with a great organization. This
organization has been bearing the torch, carrying the torch--the
flame--of Black history now for so many years, founded by the Honorable
Carter G. Woodson, who is widely known as the person who established
this notion of a Black History Week, Black History Month. So I am
[[Page H2212]]
proud to recognize this organization. The organization is the
Association for the Study of African-American Life and History.
This is the preeminent organization of its kind. It is the leader of
the pack when it comes to Black history, and I am proud to be
associated with them and proud to tell you that this year, for our
Black History Month, there is a theme: A Century of Black History
Commemorations. A century, 100 years.
Today, I have chosen the topic, one that I think embraces something
that is a little bit more contemporary and something that gives us
reason to understand why we have to celebrate Black history.
The topic is Black History: Stolen Legacies. Stolen legacies. Black
History: Stolen Legacies.
Mr. Speaker, fear not, because I want you to understand that I
understand that this theme could be applicable to people of color in
this country. It could be applicable to persons who are Latinos. It
could be applicable to people who are Asians because the complete
history of the country has not been properly documented and recorded.
However, since it is Black History Month, I think it appropriate that I
take up the cause and explain it as it relates to Black History Month.
Before I go on, I think I should remind people that I am also the
same Al Green who has been censured. Censured, but not silenced.
Censured, but not silenced.
I am proud today to take up this cause of Black history in Black
History Month.
Mr. Speaker, in speaking of legacies that have been stolen, we
annually honor General Gordon Granger for going into Galveston and
informing the enslaved persons there that the Emancipation Proclamation
applied to them and that they were free people, liberated people.
When we do this, however, we do not acknowledge the people who made
it possible for General Gordon Granger to go to Galveston. These
persons were members of the 25th Army Corps, approximately 1,000
persons of African ancestry who went to Galveston prior to Gordon
Granger.
They made it possible for Gordon Granger to stand in Galveston and
deliver general order No. 3. These were the persons who ran the
Confederates all the way to the Mexican border--legacies stolen because
they have literally been minimized and had their histories somehow
sanitized.
Today, we want to make sure that we talk about these persons whose
legacies have been stolen: 25th Army Corps.
Let's bring this forward to the civil rights movement. In the civil
rights movement, we honor--and we should honor--Rosa Parks, a Black
woman who took her seat on a bus in a racist southern town. When she
took that seat, she ignited a spark that started the civil rights
movement.
Rosa Parks should be honored for what she did. She was incarcerated
for what she did. She should be honored, and we do honor her. Yet, Mr.
Speaker, the legacy is incomplete because the history of this has not
been completely told.
If the true history is told, you have to mention Claudette Colvin--
Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old high school student, member of the
NAACP. Claudette Colvin, she is a person who, 9 months prior to Rosa
Parks taking that seat, did the same thing and was arrested. Legacy
stolen, legacy denied.
Claudette Colvin, not only did she go to jail and suffer the same
indignation and humiliation as the Honorable Rosa Parks, but she did
something else. She filed a lawsuit. She was a plaintiff in the lawsuit
Browder v. Gayle.
This is the lawsuit that brought the Montgomery bus boycott to a
legal end because it was under the pen of the Honorable Frank M.
Johnson, Jr., a Federal district court judge, who ordered that that bus
line be integrated and no longer segregated.
This was the dispute that took place when Dr. King was promoted to
the leadership of the civil rights movement. This is where he led the
people in this bus boycott to make sure that, at some point, Black
people could sit on any seat on the bus that they chose to, because
they couldn't.
You could take a seat on the front or somewhere near the front, and
people could simply say: Move back. There is a White person who needs
your seat. Then you move back, and if another came on: Move back. There
is another White person who needs your seat.
This is true history. This is the history that is untold.
So Dr. King led the boycott. Rosa Parks started the initiative, but
it was Claudette Colvin who took the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, the
lawsuit filed that eventually caused a judge, Frank M. Johnson, Jr., to
rule that that line had to be desegregated.
Claudette Colvin has been denied her place in history. Very little is
said about her.
{time} 1210
Now, I would like to contemporize, and this is going to give people
an understanding as to this pattern of denying Black people their
proper place in history, this pattern of stealing legacies, of
whitewashing history as it relates to Black people--and it happens to
people of color, not just Black people--and people of color it has
happened to in this country. So, let's now contemporize as it relates
to Black history and talk about something that happened in the State of
Texas.
We have a President of the United States who concluded that he had to
have five more seats for the Republican side in Congress, five more
seats to hold on to power, five more seats to continue to be the
reckless, ruthless, lawless President that he is, five more seats.
Because if he loses the House, he loses his ability to do many of the
things that the House can constrain him and prevent him from doing,
because the House controls the purse strings.
He said: I want five seats. Four of the five that he actually
identified were minority coalition seats, where minority people were
electing the persons of their choice, and they were electing minority
people. Well, he wanted five, four of the five being these seats that
could elect minority people, minority people coalescing to elect
people, a legitimate thing for people to do.
Well, in so doing, he ordered the Governor to do this. The Governor
got with the attorney general. The two of them worked it out such that
seats were taken in Texas.
I am just going to focus on one of them. In Houston, Texas, we had
the 18th Congressional District, historic as it is called quite often--
and I concur with the persons who would call it such; the historic 18th
Congressional District--the 18th Congressional District, the district
of Barbara Jordan, the district that had the great Craig Washington,
Mickey Leland, Sheila Jackson Lee, Sylvester Turner, the 18th
Congressional District, a historic Congressional District.
The 18th Congressional District was adjacent to the Ninth
Congressional District. We will call it, for our purposes today, the
old 18th Congressional District, and you will understand better why in
just a moment, located adjacent to the Ninth Congressional District. In
fact, if you look north and south, the 18th was at the top, and the
Ninth was under the 18th. The Ninth Congressional District was one that
elected a person of color, as well.
The President and the Governor decided that they would do something
called crack. This is where you break a district, and then you pack--
you take it and push the persons in those two districts together, but
in so doing, you eliminate a district. In this case, that is what they
did. So they cracked, and they packed. They stacked. They put the Ninth
and the 18th together.
When they put the Ninth and the 18th together, they eliminated the
possibility for a person of color to be elected in the Ninth District
by moving the lines for it over to another area.
Now, I shouldn't say ``eliminate.'' Anything can happen. My belief is
that there are capable, competent, and qualified people running, but
the prognostication is that the configuration of it in terms of the
numbers is likely to elect a conservative person, probably a very
conservative person. My hope is that won't happen.
In any event, coming back to the Ninth and the 18th, when they
combined these two districts, they eliminated the possibility for the
people of these two districts to have two Representatives in Congress.
They eliminated that possibility, and they made it possible for only
one to come from these two districts, only one person
[[Page H2213]]
from the 18th and the Ninth, only one. When they combined them such
that only one person could be elected from the two, that eliminated the
possibility of another minority person being elected.
Historically, a Black person has represented the Ninth, and Black
people have represented the 18th in Congress.
When this was done, if you look at it just numerically, the people of
the Ninth are losing a Representative if you look at numbers, but if
you look at it deeply, within what happened, they put more of the
people from the Ninth District in this new 18th than from the old 18th
District. Approximately two-thirds of the people in this Ninth District
are in the new 18th District. Now, you have a district with 18 on it as
its number that is packed with people from District Nine.
Another way to look at it, to simplify, if you have two pies, and you
take a slice out of one pie and you decide you are going to add it to
another pie, but only take two slices from the other, and then you
combine them to create three pieces of pie, there would be two pieces
from the Ninth District creating this pie and one piece from the 18th.
That is almost what has happened here, if not exactly what has
happened. Two-thirds of this 18th consists of people from the Ninth
Congressional District.
Now, why is this such a dastardly thing? Because in Texas, we have
struggled for minority people to have representation, from White
primaries--and a person in Houston, Texas, took the case all the way to
the Supreme Court. His name was Lonnie Smith. He was a dentist. He took
it all the way to the Supreme Court to defeat White primaries. When the
Supreme Court said, no, you can't have White primaries, what did Texas
do? Texas decided to have White pre-primaries--true story, White pre-
primaries. It had to go all the way back to the Supreme Court, which
said, no, Texas, if you can't have White primaries, you can't have
White pre-primaries.
This is something that is consistent in Texas, in terms of its
behavior as it relates to people of color having proper representation
in Congress.
We now have a circumstance where but one person of color will now be
coming from the Houston area because of these two districts. But one
will come from the two districts that have been combined.
Here is what I have done for our Black History Month. I believe that
people who do such dastardly things ought to be recorded in history for
their dastardly deeds. That is dastard with a d, not a b. They should
be recorded in history as the dastards they are. That is with a b--no,
excuse me. That is with a d. As the dastards they are, they should be
recorded.
Let's talk about the dastards that have perpetrated this invidious
discrimination on the people of the 18th and Ninth Congressional
Districts.
The first dastard to be dealt with is, of course, the President of
the United States, so I have a resolution that condemns President
Donald Trump for ordering an unprecedented midcycle, racist
redistricting effort in Texas--midcycle, racist redistricting in Texas,
President Trump.
I have this resolution because a court concluded that it was racist.
The court concluded under the leadership of the--I say ``leadership,''
the judge who handed the opinion out, who penned the opinion, a
conservative judge, I might add, a Federal judge. This conservative
Federal judge concluded that the lines were racially drawn--racially
drawn. With the lines being racially drawn, this means that they were
using racist tactics.
We want to condemn what the judge found to be the case in Texas from
the three-judge panel, that this is racist. This is what a three-judge
panel concluded: This is racist.
So, we have a resolution condemning the President for this racist
behavior, as we should. We want history to know who these dastards are:
the President of the United States of America, five seats, and make
sure that in Texas, you combine a couple of them. That is what was
done. A couple of them combined so that one Representative is lost to a
minority community.
Well, they didn't stop there. As I said, the Governor performed this
dastardly deed. For doing this, Governor, you should be properly
recognized in history for the dastardly deed that you have done. I have
a resolution that will honor you as such, Governor. This is a
resolution that condemns Texas Governor Greg Abbott for delaying the
election in Texas, the 18th Congressional District, beyond a reasonable
time. The President ordered it. The Governor followed through, but he
didn't stop there. The Governor decided that he would delay the
election for a Representative for the new 18th Congressional District.
Remember, we have the old one that will no longer exist after this
year, and the new one, which will then move forward, that has been--
where we have two districts combined.
{time} 1220
The Governor didn't just stop with combining the districts. He
decided he would delay the election for almost a year.
Just recently, a person was elected to represent this old 18th
Congressional District, and now we have an election coming up for the
new 18th Congressional District. If it sounds confusing, it is.
On March 3, there will be an election for the new district, but the
Governor delayed the election for the old district for almost 1 year.
It was just recently that we had the election for the old 18th
Congressional District.
For this Governor, for your dastardly deed, we made a record, and we
are going to honor you for what you have done in delaying the election
for some unreasonable amount of time. History ought to know who you are
and what you did.
But we are not going to stop there. We have to now recognize that
there are some other dastards involved here. We already acknowledged
the President as a dastard and the Governor of the State of Texas as a
dastard.
Now, we have to talk about the Houston Chronicle. The Houston
Chronicle, for whatever reasons, wittingly or unwittingly, has joined
forces with these two dastards. The Houston Chronicle has published
stories, many of them wherein they have indicated in the stories that
two Members of Congress passed, and they did, and that, as a result of
these two Members passing, the Houston Chronicle believes that ageism
is an appropriate thing for them to express continually in their
newspaper.
The Houston Chronicle has engaged in what I call ageism, and if you
read the stories, I think you will come to the same conclusion. So,
they decided they would engage in this ageism.
Here is what they have done. They continually write stories wherein
they talk about the death of these two iconic persons, two great heroes
in Texas history. We don't want their stories diminished in any way.
That would be the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee and the Honorable
Sylvester Turner.
The Houston Chronicle, one of the dastards, the Houston Chronicle is
engaging in ageism, and here is how they are doing it. The Houston
Chronicle has concluded that ageism is appropriate because the two
persons who preceded the person who is running now, they died while in
office. Somehow, they have decided to charge their deaths with this
monthlong, many months long, almost 1 year long delay in an election.
They talk about their deaths and convince people that you have to be
careful, that people can die. So, if the next person dies, the Governor
would do the same thing. Rather than blame the Governor solely, they
have now transferred some of this to the persons who died.
This is the Houston Chronicle. They are committing ageism by saying
that people don't want to have another person who is of a certain age,
because if you do that, then that person might die.
Who can guarantee life? No one knows for whom the bell will toll
next. No one can guarantee life. Young people die every day. No one can
know. But the Houston Chronicle has made it their mission to campaign
on this issue.
Here is what is interesting about what the Houston Chronicle is
doing. They only apply that theory to a person of color. Senator Cornyn
is running. If Senator Cornyn wins, he gets a 6-year term. Senator
Cornyn will be among the oldest in the Senate, but they don't apply
that to Senator Cornyn. They have not tried to pressure Senator Cornyn
out of a race. In fact,
[[Page H2214]]
they have endorsed Senator Cornyn. They have gone so far as to endorse
Senator Cornyn.
Senator Cornyn has Wesley Hunt running against him. He is a younger
person. They haven't said that you ought to elect Wesley Hunt. No, they
have said to elect John Cornyn.
Well, what is it about these two people that makes them different
from the other scenario that I have called to your attention? What is
it, Houston Chronicle? Yes, you are going to see this. You are going to
see me. I do not fear the Houston Chronicle. What is it about this that
allows them to do exactly what they have done?
Well, Wesley Hunt happens to be a person of color. John Cornyn
happens to be a White man. The Houston Chronicle has a different
standard when it comes to John Cornyn.
Just think about that. Think about that, a different standard.
They have an all-out campaign going on. You might say they are the
campaign. Well, for your dastardly deeds, Houston Chronicle, you, too,
will be recorded in history with a resolution.
Now, I want to say just a few more words about these people that they
have demeaned. First, you heard me mention Al Edwards earlier. He is
the father of Juneteenth, the father of Juneteenth. We have a
resolution honoring him as such. For Sylvester Turner, a person who
united diverse communities in Houston for 8 years as mayor, we have a
resolution honoring him for his being that person who created a
symbiosis in Houston, having people of different hues, different
ethnicities, from different places around the world come together.
Finally, we have a resolution honoring the life and enduring public
service of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
I--personal pronoun--will not allow their legacies to be stolen. I
will not. And I will not allow dastards not to be recorded as they
properly should be in history. They will not escape history.
Mr. President, you won't escape history.
Mr. Governor, you won't escape history.
Houston Chronicle, you won't escape history.
Now, I want to say just a word about the top culprit in the process,
and that would be the President. The President is the biggest dastard
in the country. President Donald Trump is dastard number one.
This says: ``Countdown to Impeachment.'' This is the President of the
United States of America seated here. I am proud to tell you that I
stood right over there and told the President to his face that you
don't have a mandate to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
This was at a joint session of Congress. This dastard said that they
weren't going to do it, and, lo and behold, the dastard did it. They
cut about a trillion dollars out of healthcare. This is the dastard who
perpetrated the deed. He ought to be recognized in history as the
person who did the greatest injustice to healthcare the country has
ever seen, Donald John Trump.
But he has gone beyond this. His behavior is something that is
difficult to codify, difficult to explain, but I will tell you this: He
went too far just recently. He has gone too far on many other
occasions, but recently, he went too far again.
This time, this dastard, Donald John Trump, sent out a meme wherein
he had the gall, unmitigated as we say, where he had just the low-down,
dirty instinct to send out, to post, a picture of the Honorable
President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama, to picture
them as members of the primate family. That is what this dastard did to
two of our heroes of Black history.
{time} 1230
If he had his way, there would be no Black history. He is the person
who has decided that Black history is going to be minimized because we
talk too much about slavery. He wants slavery to be whitewashed. There
are people in Texas who call it involuntary relocation.
Murder, rape, and 240 years of working without a paycheck is
involuntary relocation?
This dastard supports these kinds of things, this dastard. That is
why we have this across the top of this poster, three words, countdown
to impeachment. Countdown to impeachment.
Yes, Mr. President, I don't speak for anybody but myself. I don't
speak for any party. I don't speak for anyone, well, except myself and
everybody who agrees with me. That is whom I speak for. Mr. President,
not only are you a subject of impeachment, but now Ms. Noem is a
subject of impeachment.
Yes, Ms. Noem, I have signed Articles of Impeachment against you. My
hope is that you do what you should do, in my opinion, which is resign.
I don't think the President would ever fire you, but you have blood on
your hands. You have tried your best to cover up what happened when two
American citizens, who were unarmed, lost their lives at the hands of
the constabulary. You have blood on your hands. You should be
impeached.
You also should go to jail because you tried to cover it up. There is
a law that deals with this kind of behavior. When you know that a
felony has been committed--you know that a felony has been committed,
and you don't report that felony and then you try to cover it up, that
is a crime.
Somebody ought to check out 18 U.S.C. section 4. Yes, you committed a
crime. You ought to be locked up.
People on the other side are notorious for having said: Lock her up,
talking about a Democrat. Here is your chance to repeat your chant:
Lock her up. Lock her up.
Lock up Ms. Noem for what she has done. Impeach Ms. Noem is what we
should do. Aside from impeaching her, she gets her marching orders from
this dastard; he has to be impeached too. We cannot allow this to go
unnoticed and unchallenged. I cannot. I say we and all of the people
who agree with me. There are a good many who do not, and I don't want
to discredit them in any way, but I cannot.
So, we are in a countdown to another impeachment. I am going to call
this the Black History Month impeachment because I am going to deal
with the racism that this President perpetuates, the racism that he
perpetrates, the racism that he places in policies that are harmful to
the American public. I am going to deal with that. Then we will give
people a chance to decide whether it is as bad as you say it was. You
have been on television talking about how this horrible deed was
perpetrated by this dastard.
Let's see if you really believe what you have said. Andrew Johnson
was impeached in 1868 for speaking ill of Congress. So don't say you
can't impeach for this kind of dastardly behavior from this dastard.
Don't say that you can't do it, because we have seen it done. We have
seen it done by people who were closer to the drafting of the
Constitution than we were. So they probably had a better sense of what
impeachment was all about than these so-called scholars who have
decided that impeachment has to have so many lofty goals achieved
before you should bring articles. That is not true.
Whatever the House says impeachment is, that is what it is. It is not
appealable. It is a political question. It is not something that
requires a violation of a statutory law. So if you believe what you
have been propagating when you say that this was such a bad thing that
the President did with these memes, then we will give you an
opportunity to express that here on the floor of the Congress of the
United States of America.
I just believe we have an obligation to do this. I don't think that
we should stand by, we, meaning the people who agree with me. People
who don't agree, they will do what they do. That is okay with me.
I am going to vote my conscience. I ask others to vote theirs. Just
vote your conscience, that is all I ask. If we vote our conscience, I
hope that in the end, maybe not today, but someday--Stevie Wonder has a
song where he says: ``someday at Christmastime.''
Maybe someday in this near future, in my lifetime, this dastard will
be impeached. I guarantee you this, the Record will show that at least
one Member, one Member, stood right here in this House and read
Articles of Impeachment to remove this dastard from office for the
racism that he perpetrates and perpetuates.
For edification purposes, those who tolerate racism perpetuate
racism. If you tolerate it, then you perpetuate it. I will not tolerate
it. Of course, there are those who will always say: Al, you stand
alone.
[[Page H2215]]
Mr. Speaker, on some issues, it is better to stand alone than not
stand at all, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McDowell). Members are reminded to
refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
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