[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 55 (Tuesday, March 24, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H2669-H2672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH
Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Ms.
McClellan of Virginia was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of
the minority leader.
General Leave
Ms. McCLELLAN. 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 matter of this Special
Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kennedy of Utah). Is there objection to
the request of the gentlewoman from Virginia?
There was no objection.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is Women's History Month.
For centuries, Black women have led our country through social
evolutions, critical periods of growth, and eras of innovation.
From the civil rights movement to consistently serving as the
foundation for our community success, Black women continue to push the
needle.
Women's History Month offers us the opportunity to uplift these
monumental achievements and highlight every pivotal moment in history
in which Black women have tipped the scales toward progress and
singlehandedly moved our country forward.
For the past year, the actions of the Trump administration have
brought consequences to every vulnerable community but have
specifically attacked the foundation of Black women's economic success
and social impact.
Hundreds of thousands of Black women have lost their jobs under
President Trump's leadership, and the administration remains committed
to eliminating critical programs that build a strong foundation and a
pathway to economic opportunities for Black women across the Nation.
During a time when Black women are under attack, the Congressional
Black Caucus takes the floor tonight so that our Members can lift them
up.
As we commemorate Women's History Month and look back on the
achievements of Black women throughout the history of our Nation, I
think back to the roots of our Nation, the birthplace of American
democracy and American slavery, none other than my home, Virginia.
Established on July 30, 1619, Virginia boasts the oldest, continuous
lawmaking body in the Western Hemisphere, the first legislative
assembly in the New World, the Virginia General Assembly.
One month later, a Dutch privateer arrived on the shores of Virginia
with ``20 and odd'' Africans captured by Portuguese slavers in west-
central Africa that were traded for provisions. Among them, there was
at least one woman that we know of.
Three months after that, Virginia took steps toward a permanent
colony with the recruitment of English women to Jamestown to make wives
to the inhabitants. Those women arrived with no right to vote, no right
to hold public office, and no right to control their own property.
Since 1619, Black women in America have sat at the intersection of
racism and sexism. Tonight, we will uplift their stories, how we did
overcome, but we still have a long way to go to truly be equal under
the law, to truly take part in the American Dream.
Tonight, you will hear our Members talk about the good, the bad, the
ugly, the inspiring, and much, much more.
Mr. Speaker, to start that conversation, I yield to the gentlewoman
from New York (Ms. Clarke), our chair.
{time} 1930
Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from
Virginia for anchoring this evening's Congressional Black Caucus
Special Order hour and for her diligence and commitment to sending the
message of the CBC throughout this Nation.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus
and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Black Women & Girls to
recognize Women's History Month and the countless contributions women
have made to our Nation and to the world.
These 31 days offer a vital opportunity to honor women of every
background for their achievements, which have too often been
overlooked, celebrating the progress and rights secured by those who
have paved the way.
Even as we celebrate, we must confront a difficult truth: many of the
same barriers that our mothers and grandmothers fought to dismantle
unfortunately persist today. Disparities in access to capital,
education, opportunity, and power remain far too wide.
We cannot ignore the growing efforts to roll back hard-won rights. We
cannot yield to forces that would usher in a future where the next
generation of women has fewer freedoms than those who came before them.
This is not an exaggeration or hyperbole. Policies that undermine
diversity, equity, and inclusion already having real consequences,
including the displacement of over 300,000 Black women from the
workforce on the basis of DEI dog whistles.
Let's be clear. These are not statistics. These are our mothers,
daughters, entrepreneurs, and essential workers whose contributions are
being shoved aside and whitewashed.
We know when Black women thrive, our communities thrive, our Nation
thrives.
Women's History Month must also be a call to action and a moment to
speak plainly about the threats to women's voting rights, bodily
autonomy, and economic opportunities to support their families.
Mr. Speaker, we are not going back. We owe it to those who came
before us and those who will follow to stand firm in defense of that
progress.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from New
Jersey, Representative LaMonica McIver.
Mrs. McIVER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the fine gentlewoman of Virginia
(Ms. McClellan) for anchoring tonight's Special Order hour to celebrate
Women's History Month and to celebrate and speak truth tonight. I am
glad to be standing here during Women's History Month right after Black
History Month to celebrate specifically Black women.
[[Page H2670]]
Black women have always looked at this country and thought and asked:
How can I make it better? They then fought for that ``better.''
When we weren't given a seat at the table, we made it our mission to
bring a folding chair. We have always stood in the gaps. We have a long
history of being first to take on the fights that others would not take
on.
Looking at the pain and suffering among our families, neighbors, and
friends, and deciding to step in to protect the vulnerable and speak
out for the voiceless, especially when those in power won't fight for
us. We fight for us.
We know our liberation is tied to the liberation of others: Black,
Brown, immigrant, citizens, every race, every gender, all of us. We
know that truth, and that is why there is continually so much effort
put toward stopping us. Even if this very body in this very Chamber,
Black women are under attack.
We are currently witnessing a coordinated and vicious assault on the
foundations of our freedom and history. We are seeing the effects of
reckless economic policies, forcing hundreds of thousands of Black
women out of the workforce. We are watching Black women stripped of our
healthcare and maternal care. With every statistic, there are real
human costs behind them.
There are mornings that I wake up feeling exactly how they want us to
feel: powerless, hopeless, angry, and tired. It is the example of the
Black women leaders that came before me that remind me that we cannot
back down. There is no progress through comfort.
Now is not the time to become complacent. Yes, we are tired. We are
being pushed, but now is the moment for neck-deep courage.
Just last month I was in Selma for the remembrance of Bloody Sunday.
A speaker referenced how in Exodus, Moses went neck-deep into the Red
Sea before it was parted. He took the first step toward a raging ocean
because he knew that his prayer to be liberated would manifest.
She spoke of how Harriet Tubman went neck-deep to wade in the water,
facing the threat of death, because she knew that freedom was worth
fighting for.
Mr. Speaker, the toughest fights to freedom require you to go neck-
deep. Every generation must step up and ask: Are we neck-deep people?
And one thing I know is that is who Black women truly are. I am saying
it plain: Black women are under attack, but we are not going to be
silenced or scared--not now, not ever.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman (Mrs. McIver) for
her comments, and I am proud to be in this fight with her.
As a Virginian, I am keenly cognizant of the fact that Virginia was
both the birthplace of American slavery and the birthplace of American
democracy. That dichotomy I have always found both ironic and
inspiring.
This year we celebrate 250 years of a document written by Thomas
Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, which wrote that all men
are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
Yet Jefferson didn't include the men and women--he didn't include
women at all in that decree, and he certainly didn't include the men,
women, and children that he owned in bondage at Monticello, including
the mother of his children. That ideal upon which our country was
founded sparked the imagination of the men, women, and children in
bondage across this young Nation.
When Abigail Adams' husband was on his way to the Constitutional
Convention, she said: Remember the ladies and be kinder to them than
our ancestors were.
The men at that convention ignored her advice. They wrote a
constitution creating a government by, of, and for we the people. They
didn't include women. They didn't include the men, women, and children
enslaved at the home of James Madison, the architect of The Virginia
Plan that led to the Constitution. In fact, those men, women, and
children weren't counted as people at all. They were counted as three-
fifths of a person for purposes of identifying how many Members of
Congress would serve in this body.
Many of those women were viewed as broodmares. Many of them were
forced to care for other people's children while theirs were stolen.
They forced to nurse other people's children while they ached for their
own.
Since the founding of our Nation, Black women at every opportunity
have fought to be included in ``we the people.'' We have fought to
expand suffrage beyond White land-owning men along with White women,
even when we were the last throughout the South to benefit from that
labor.
{time} 1940
Virginia has found herself a leading lady in the story of expanding
the franchise. Often, how far we went determined whether the Federal
Government did its part to expand we the people beyond those original
White, land-owning men.
I stand today on the shoulders of all of those who paved the way for
me to be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress,
historymakers from all generations who fought for the right to fully
participate in our democracy because they recognized that, in a
government by, of, and for the people, government will only reflect the
perspective of and, therefore, meet the needs of those who participate.
Even as Black men received expanded suffrage during Reconstruction
and in the aftermath of the Civil War, the nascent women's rights
movement, which stated at its first convention in the ``Declaration of
Sentiments'' that all men and women were created equal--yet, with the
14th Amendment, the seeds of division were sown.
When that amendment, which guaranteed equal protection under the law,
for the first time ever inserted the word ``male'' in the U.S.
Constitution, a fissure began in the suffrage movement and the women's
rights movement that pitted some--not all, some--White women against
Black women because they would not support suffrage for Black men
before White women.
Yet, Black women continued to serve in these suffragette groups,
oftentimes their work being ignored.
I have often tried to research some of the Black women suffragettes
from Virginia. They are hard to find. They are usually seen described
as community leaders, not suffragettes. Yet, when you read between the
lines of their papers and their work, you see what they were really up
to.
I am wearing red today in honor of the 22 founders of my sorority,
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. Founded 113 years ago in
January 1913, in their first public act, the 22 founders marched in
Washington in the Women's Suffrage Procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Yet, they and every other Black woman who showed up to march that day
were told that they had to march in the back because the organizers of
that march did not want to offend Southern allies.
Ida B. Wells famously refused to march in the back. She said that she
was going to march with her delegation. The chair of her delegation,
Genevieve Stone, was the only delegation member who said that she could
march with her delegation.
The 22 founders of Delta Sigma Theta marched in their caps and gowns
with other university women, marking their first public act as a
sorority. It is fitting that I call them out today because thousands of
members of Delta Sigma Theta were on the Hill today, still fighting to
preserve access to the vote as the SAVE Act is being debated down the
hall, a modern-day poll tax that would require everyone to produce
documents to prove their citizenship.
These are documents that cost money, documents that, if they don't
show the same name as on your birth certificate, aren't good enough.
One of my soror Members of Congress, Joyce Beatty, told a story
yesterday to those Deltas assembled about how, when she went to get her
REAL ID--this is a good example of the hurdles you would have to go
through to meet the requirements of the SAVE Act--she showed up with
her birth certificate and was told that it was not good enough. It is a
copy. You need the original.
Not living in the State where she got her original, she had to go get
another copy of the original and brought that back. That is not good
enough. The
[[Page H2671]]
name on her birth certificate is not the name on her driver's license
because she was married.
She had to go back and get another original copy of her marriage
certificate. That wasn't good enough because the name on the marriage
certificate still didn't match the birth certificate because she had
been married before.
She had to go get a copy of that marriage certificate and the divorce
decree and show the chain of custody of her name just to be able to get
a REAL ID to prove that she was a U.S. citizen who could fly.
Yet, that REAL ID wouldn't be good enough for her to register to vote
under the SAVE Act. She would have to go through all those same hoops
all over again.
The history of suffrage in this country is the history of Black women
confronting obstacles, going over them, around them, through them, for
that sacred right to participate in a government by, of, and for the
people.
When the 19th Amendment finally gave women the right to vote in our
Constitution, my grandmothers, my mother, and my great-grandmothers
didn't benefit. They all lived in the South. Through poll taxes,
literacy tests, and other mechanisms, they were still denied access to
the ballot.
Many Black women fought against these obstacles. Fannie Lou Hamer, a
sharecropper from Mississippi, was jailed, evicted from her home, fired
from her job, and severely beaten for daring to try to register to
vote. Hamer cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to
challenge an all-White delegation to the Democratic National
Convention.
Ella Baker, whose legacy is often overshadowed by Black male figures
of the civil rights movement, played a crucial role in organizing the
Montgomery bus boycott, which was inspired by another woman, Rosa
Parks, who herself made waves when she refused to give up her seat on
the bus for a White passenger and was arrested.
Baker later founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or
SNCC, and encouraged students to take charge of their activism and
continue to make their perspectives heard. Another SNCC leader, Diane
Nash, became one of the most well-known figures in Nashville and helped
to organize sit-ins and sustained Freedom Rides throughout the Deep
South.
Another Delta, Dorothy Height, whose birthday is today, was one of
the Big Six of the civil rights movement. She was one of the leaders of
the six organizations that planned the March on Washington. Yet, she
was the only one of the six who didn't speak that day because the five
male leaders excluded women from the speaking program.
Dorothy was there anyway and continued to fight for Black women to be
able to vote and to overcome the intersection between racism and
sexism.
These are just a few of the women who fought for the right to vote.
There are other rights that women were denied, particularly Black
women, solely because of the color of their skin.
{time} 1950
Everybody knows about the great progressive movement that expanded
worker rights to many, many workers. What most people don't know is
that those rights explicitly excluded so-called Jim Crow jobs, domestic
workers as the main example. Those jobs were jobs that once were
performed by Black men and women for free during slavery, then from
very low wages because they were the only jobs available to Black
people, particularly in the South.
My mother's family saw this firsthand. My mother grew up in the Gulf
Coast of Mississippi, a little town called DeLisle. DeLisle had no
school for Black children because the State of Mississippi didn't think
them worth educating.
She was the third youngest of 14 children. She was born in 1932, her
oldest sibling born in 1918. There was one school that would teach
those children. It was the Catholic Church, but it only went to the
eighth grade. When her brothers graduated eighth grade, the only jobs
available to them were as laborers. When her sisters graduated, the
only jobs available to them were as domestic workers or home care
workers. Her siblings, her sisters, her mother, her grandmothers, her
great-grandmothers were domestics. She wanted more.
She had to leave her hometown to go to high school. She had to leave
her State to get a job, but she did it. By the time I came along in the
1970s, she was running the TRIO Programs at Virginia State University,
three federally-funded programs that helped first-generation and at-
risk students get to, thrive in, and graduate from college.
Those three programs are now under attack by the Trump administration
as it works to dismantle the Department of Education. The Department of
Education which was created to fill gaps that State and local
governments refused to fill, particularly to meet the educational needs
and protect the civil rights of students with disabilities.
My mother is an example of the obstacles that had to be overcome
because the rights that many of us take for granted, minimum wage,
overtime protections, wage theft protections, antidiscrimination laws
at the Federal level and in most States, guess who is excluded.
Domestic workers.
As a result, thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of mostly
Black and Brown women across the country struggle to take care of
themselves and their own families as they take care of the needs of
others.
I was proud as a member of the State senate to pass--and make
Virginia the first State in the South to do it--the Domestic Worker
Bill of Rights, to remove these outdated, antiquated, and racist
exclusions. Those exclusions still exist in Federal law.
I am proud to be among a long line of Black women in Congress who owe
our very existence here to Shirley Chisholm, who in 1968 became the
first Black woman elected to Congress, representing New York's 12th
Congressional District.
She didn't get a warm welcome here. She decided not to abide by
longstanding expectations that first-term Members fly under the radar.
``I have no intention of just sitting quietly and observing,'' she
said. ``I intend to focus . . . on the Nation's problems.'' So she and
12 other Members of Congress founded the Congressional Black Caucus,
the conscience of the Congress, which 55 years later stands at 66
members strong; 32 Black women, the most in history, two for the first
time ever serving in the United States Senate.
Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and Black candidate to seek a
major party's nomination for President the year I was born, in 1972.
While she lost the primary in that race, she continued to serve in
Congress for another 11 years. She served on the Committee on
Agriculture, and she used that role to expand access to nutrition to
millions of poor men, women, and children through the SNAP program,
which last year faced the largest cuts in American history and
threatened to take food out of the mouths of 42 million Americans.
Shirley Chisholm remains a symbol of strength and profound courage in
the face of the intense objections her very existence in this body
inspired in some people. She famously said: ``If they don't give you a
seat at the table, bring a folding chair.'' Thanks to that folding
chair, I and 31 other women stand on her shoulders.
She, alongside of Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman elected
to the United States Senate in 1992, and so many others have allowed
little girls everywhere to look at this Capitol and finally say: I
belong there too.
We have made a lot of progress towards the ideal upon which this
country was founded. Yet, every time we have made progress, there has
been a backlash that has involved violence, voter suppression, and
propaganda. We are living through the mother-of-all backlashes.
I think back to what my great-grandparents saw--my great-grandparents
who grew up in the first generation after the Emancipation
Proclamation--men who gained the right to vote, who gained the
opportunity for social and economic wealth. Black women were there
every step of the way in that progress. They also were among those who
were lynched for it. They were also among the ones who were beaten for
it, but they persevered anyway.
Today, we are facing another backlash to progress. It has pushed
300,000 Black women out of the Federal workforce by an all-out assault
by the Trump administration through DOGE. We have seen millions at risk
of losing
[[Page H2672]]
their health insurance through devastating cuts to Medicaid and the
expiration of the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits under the Affordable
Care Act, which turned 16 yesterday.
That was personal to me. I was pregnant. Matter of fact, I was the
first member of the Virginia House of Delegates to be pregnant while in
office 16 years ago when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. I
remember how excited I was that this law could move mountains in
solving the maternal healthcare crisis, which was on my mind in my
first trimester of pregnancy. I was so excited that for the first time
prenatal visits, postnatal visits, and breastfeeding counseling and
equipment would be covered by health insurance. I was excited that for
the first time pregnancy would not be a preexisting condition that
could lead to the denial of health insurance for a woman.
{time} 2000
I was excited that Virginia had an opportunity to expand Medicaid and
create our own State-based healthcare exchange. So you can imagine my
frustration when my Republican colleagues who were in control at the
time said we are not doing that. But like many Black women before me, I
persisted. We fought and fought until we finally convinced enough
Republicans in 2018 to expand Medicaid.
In 2020, we finally created the Virginia-based healthcare exchange,
and we saw health outcomes improve, particularly for pregnant and not
pregnant Black women. We saw the statistic begin to turn around where
no longer would a Black woman be three times more likely to die within
a year of childbirth because before she was pregnant she got connected
to a medical home and could get the care she needed for underlying
healthcare conditions that made the pregnancy more risky. All of that
is now under attack.
On Monday, I checked to see the impact that the expiration of the
enhanced premium tax credits had on the Virginia marketplace now that
we have had our first open enrollment since they expired. Mr. Speaker,
19,000 Virginians didn't renew because they couldn't afford the
premium. About 20,000 Virginians renewed but then terminated their
coverage because they couldn't afford the premiums.
Families like Lester and Yolanda Johnson and their 9-year-old
daughter have seen their premiums go from roughly $600 to over $1,000.
I can understand why so many of them are struggling to decide: Can I
afford that health insurance premium?
As the President's war of choice in Iran has seen gas prices spike,
they are wondering: Can I afford to put gas in my tank? Can I afford
that plane ticket? Can I afford that energy bill?
As the tariff policies and this trade war continues to wreak havoc on
grocery prices, they are wondering which of these bills is going to
give, and unfortunately, they are gambling that they are not going to
get sick or injured. They are still going to get sick or injured, and
when they do they are going to show up at the hospital. They are going
to be treated. Somebody is going to pay for that, and that is the rest
of us.
Whether it is access to healthcare, access to the vote, access to
worker rights, access to equal pay, access to equality under the law,
we have made a lot of progress, and all of that progress is being
chipped away as we speak.
But the women of the Congressional Black Caucus are persistent. Yes,
we are fighting the same fights as other mothers, our grandmothers, and
our great-grandmothers, and we could be angry about that. We would have
every right to be. We could be despondent. We could give up, but we
don't because we fight those fights from a position of more strength
and power than our ancestors ever imagined. We fight those fights so
that our daughters and our granddaughters and our great-granddaughters
don't have to, but if they do, they will fight those fights from a
position of more strength and power than we can imagine.
As for me personally--and this is why the President's assault on our
history is so offensive to me personally because we are telling those
stories in my family, but they weren't told in my history books. For a
long time they weren't told in our public museums and our public
spaces. Now, we have begun to tell the stories. Under the President's
DEI executive order many of those stories are being removed.
The President seems obsessed with slavery and not wanting anybody to
talk about it. He thinks we talk too much about it. But slavery is the
original sin of this country. Slavery is the original wound that is
still gaping in this country because it never healed. It never healed
because we didn't talk about it, and we didn't address it. And just
like any wound caused by a family member, if you don't talk about it
and then address it, it festers. It festers until it is infected, and
then comes death.
What the President misses about that history is how it inspires and
how it can keep us going.
My family is coming here for spring break on Friday. My kids came
last year, as well. It was a vote week. So, as we always do, we went to
all of the Smithsonian museums. We went to The National Museum of
African American History and Culture, and we went to the exhibit on
slavery. We went to the exhibit on the middle passage. As I stood in
that exhibit, I imagined what it must have been like to be stolen from
your home and your family, placed on a ship, the bowels of a ship, in
inhumane conditions, treated like animals. I imagined how many people
chose to jump because the alternative they feared when they arrived at
these shores was worse than death. How many died because they couldn't
hold on?
A year ago as I stood in that exhibit, a voice came to me and said:
Somebody survived that so that you can be here in this moment in this
fight in this time. That is what keeps us going. We remember the pain
and the joy and the fight and the progress of our ancestors. We owe it
to them to build on their success and to tell their stories even when
they are uncomfortable, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Black History Month and Women's History Month and every other history
month allows us to focus in on stories that for too often in our
history went untold. Yet, we have agencies at the Federal Government
from the Department of Defense on down that don't even recognize those
months or allow their employees to. We have an administration that
threatens and bullies private companies if they try to.
We have to tell the story. We owe it to those that came before us who
lived it to tell the stories because how many people do you think knew
when they voted for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that the women
who held those roles who were mostly Black and Brown didn't have the
same rights that they took for granted? I can tell you very few did
until they were told. They had no reason to.
We are going to continue to tell these stories. We are going to
continue to fight for that progress. We are going to continue to be the
conscience of the Congress even when the Congress doesn't want to hear
from us. We are going to hold this President accountable, and we are
going to make him listen to the stories even when he wants to shut us
up because that is why we are here.
Shirley Chisholm told us that if they don't create a seat at the
table, bring a folding chair. She didn't want us to just sit there and
be quiet. She wanted us to speak truth to power. She wanted us to
continue her work and the work of everyone that came before her. We are
going to do that.
Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone for their attention tonight, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
____________________