[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 96 (Monday, June 8, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H3982-H3988]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMMEMORATING JUNETEENTH
(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 of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from Virginia?
There was no objection.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today
to anchor this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order hour
commemorating Juneteenth.
Next week, the Nation will pause to celebrate Juneteenth. Juneteenth
commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union Major General Gordon Granger
arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, which
finally freed more than 250,000 enslaved people in that State.
For while the Emancipation Proclamation officially went into effect
on July 1, 1863, emancipating those enslaved in the rebelling States of
the Confederacy, it took over 2\1/2\ years for the news to reach the
western-most Confederate State of Texas.
Broadly, Juneteenth marks Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, or Black
Independence Day. Juneteenth is considered the
[[Page H3983]]
longest-running African-American holiday. While communities have
celebrated the date since 1866, it was not officially signed into
United States law as a Federal holiday until June of 2021.
Juneteenth symbolizes that, unlike what we were taught in our
schoolbooks, emancipation was not a moment. It was a movement. It was a
movement that included acts of resistance, rebellion, and self-
liberation since Africans first arrived on American soil in bondage.
As the first Black woman serving in this body from the Commonwealth
of Virginia, I am all too familiar with this story, for the
Commonwealth is both the birthplace of American democracy and the
birthplace of the American slave trail.
In July of 1619, the House of Burgesses met at Jamestown, bringing
the concept of a representative democracy modeled after the English
Parliament that evolved into the modern-day bicameral legislature. The
House of Burgesses continues to operate today as the Virginia House of
Delegates.
A month later, in August of 1619, a Dutch privateer arrived at Point
Comfort, Virginia, containing, ``20 and odd'' Africans that John Rolfe
recorded were traded for provisions. They were originally captured by
Portuguese slavers in West Central Africa, known today as Angola.
While slavery was not officially acknowledged in the laws of Virginia
until 1661, there is no doubt that the first Africans aboard the White
Lion were treated as slaves, assigned heavy labor, and treated as
property by the colonial elite.
{time} 2010
I am quite cognizant that 250 years ago when Thomas Jefferson wrote
the Declaration of Independence and said that all men are created equal
and endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, he did not include the nearly
half a million enslaved men, women, and children or, indeed, any women
at all in the Thirteen Colonies. He did not include those enslaved at
his beloved Monticello, including his own children.
I am quite clear that when James Madison wrote the Virginia Plan that
formed the foundation for a government by, of, and for we the people in
order to form a more perfect Union, he did not include the over 300
enslaved people who lived and labored at his Montpelier estate under
three generations of his family.
The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789, considered enslaved
individuals only three-fifths of a person for the purpose of how many
people would serve in this body and for taxation. The States that came
together to create that more perfect Union treated those people as
property.
Since 1789, the story of America has been one of each generation
trying to reconcile the ideals upon which we were founded with the
reality and making the ideals true for us all.
Despite what some would have you believe, slavery literally tore this
country apart, for as then Abraham Lincoln predicted in 1858, a house
divided against itself cannot stand. He said this government could not
endure permanently, half slave and half free. While he did not expect
the Union to be dissolved, and he did not expect the house to fall, he
expected it would cease to be divided. It took a war to do that.
Once Abraham Lincoln was elected President, and South Carolina became
the first State to secede from the Union, its 1860 Declaration of the
Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South
Carolina explicitly and repeatedly states that the preservation and
expansion of slavery was the primary reason for leaving the Union.
Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas likewise formally published
Declarations of Causes that explicitly cited the preservation and
expansion of slavery as their primary reason for seceding. States like
Alabama and Virginia passed shorter ordinances of secession directly
citing the hostile attitudes of the Federal Government toward their
``domestic institutions'' and the election of a sectional party based
on antislavery platforms. It was clear they were seceding because of
slavery, so that they could keep it.
After the war, Reconstruction sought to bind the country's wounds and
expand the promise of its founding to the formerly enslaved, and
Congress expanded suffrage to Black citizens, used Federal troops to
vigorously defend it in response to a violent backlash across the
South.
Congress passed three Reconstruction amendments designed to guarantee
equal, civil, and legal rights to formerly enslaved Americans. All
three granted Congress the power to enforce their provisions through
legislation: the 13th Amendment finally abolishing slavery in the
United States; the 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to all
persons born or naturalized in the United States and prohibited any
State from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizenship,
applied due process of laws to the States, and provided equal
protection under the law. It also provided for the reduction of
representation in the House of Representatives of any State that
disenfranchised any male citizens--and they meant male--over 21 years
of age in Federal elections, except for participation in a rebellion or
other crime; and the 15th Amendment prohibited the denial or
abridgement of the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.
Yet, even with these amendments, Southern States resisted, resorting
to paramilitary organizations like the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Black
citizens for daring to seek to vote, run for office, serve on juries,
own property, open businesses, live in the wrong neighborhood, go to
the wrong school, eventually drink from the wrong water fountain.
In 1870 and 1871, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts to allow the
Federal Government to intervene when States or individuals infringed
upon the rights provided in the 14th and 15th Amendments, and as a
result Black men gained political power across the South.
In 1870, Senator Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi and
Representative Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first
Black Members of Congress. A total of 22 Black men served in Congress
between 1870 and 1901, including my predecessor, John Mercer Langston
of Virginia's Fourth District, in 1890.
The political, social, and economic power gained by Blacks across the
South during Reconstruction then faced a violent backlash, as the KKK
and other groups began a reign of terror that relied extensively on
lynchings.
To resolve the deadlocked Presidential election of 1876, the
Compromise of 1877 brought Reconstruction to an end, the Federal
Government removed its troops from the South, and widespread violence,
propaganda, and voter suppression began.
In the final year of Reconstruction, the unraveling of Federal
protection and voting rights began when the Supreme Court issued two
opinions that gutted the Enforcement Act--United States v. Cruikshank
and the United States v. Reese. Once Democrats regained control and
Reconstruction ended in the South, Congress lost interest in Federal
intervention and State disenfranchisement efforts.
Then the long arc toward moral justice began again. When President
Harry Truman integrated the Army and when the civil rights movement
began to gain ground, those Southern Democrats fled the Democratic
Party and became Republicans.
Today, we see a very similar backlash to the backlash to progress
that came after Reconstruction. With the first Court case gutting the
Voting Rights Act, the Shelby decision, and now the Callais decision,
we see a rollback of the Federal Government protecting voting rights.
We see a weaponization of the very tools used to ensure that life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was open to all roll back the
progress made in civil rights and equal protection under the law. We
see an administration that wants to tell one side of the story that I
just told that doesn't want anything uncomfortable to be taught in our
schools, that doesn't want anything about slavery mentioned in our
public spaces, in our museums, or in our curriculum, that doesn't want
that backlash taught.
Juneteenth gives us two opportunities: One, to celebrate the
extraordinary resilience of Black Americans
[[Page H3984]]
who came here through the Middle Passage and bondage, and today are at
historic high numbers in political leadership and representation.
However, it also gives us an opportunity to acknowledge how we got
here--the good, the bad, and the ugly; to recognize the pattern, to
recognize the backlash to progress that always includes propaganda,
whether it is the lie of white supremacy or the lie of stolen
elections; violence, whether it is racial terror, lynchings, or
insurrectionists showing up trying to stop for the second time in
American history the results of an election they didn't like, or voter
suppression, like a modern-day poll tax that we see in the SAVE Act.
We see the same backlash now, but we as the Congressional Black
Caucus are here to say: We are not going back, we will fight the
backlash, and we will continue the progress until when we say in our
Pledge of Allegiance ``liberty and justice for all,'' it means all.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).
Mrs. McBATH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia, our
esteemed colleague and our good friend, Representative McClellan, for
her historical context, for telling the truth, and for always, always
standing up to defend the democracy and the rights of African
Americans.
{time} 2020
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Juneteenth and reflect on this
enduring significance for Black Americans and, in particular, for this
Nation.
On June 19, 1865, more than 2 years after the Emancipation
Proclamation was issued, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally
learned that they were free.
Juneteenth stands as a powerful reminder that freedom, justice, and
equality have never ever been guaranteed in the United States. They
have been hard-fought and hard-won.
As we prepare to celebrate our Nation's 250th anniversary, Juneteenth
calls on us not only to honor the resilience and sacrifices of those
who came before us, but also to confront the work that remains
unfinished.
While we celebrate progress, we cannot ignore the challenges facing
Black communities today. Recent developments, including the Supreme
Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais and the rollback of programs
and resources that have helped expand opportunity and representation,
remind us that progress is not inevitable. It requires vigilance.
We cannot ignore the urgency of this moment. Many programs that
expanded educational access, strengthened healthcare, and supported
affordability for working families are being rolled back under this
administration's policies. These setbacks deepen inequities and
threaten hard-won gains.
That is why we must continue pouring into the programs and community-
led efforts that uplift Black families. By uplifting Black families, we
are uplifting all families in America.
At every step, we have a responsibility to speak out against policies
that undermine opportunity. The pursuit of equal justice demands our
continued commitment.
Yet, Juneteenth is ultimately a story of hope. It is a testament to
the strength, perseverance, and determination of generations who
refused to give up on the promise of America.
As Members of Congress, we have a responsibility to continue to do
this work, whether you want to do it or not. I remain committed to
working alongside my colleagues of the Congressional Black Caucus and
across this Nation to advance policies that promote equity, expand
opportunity, and strengthen our democracy for future generations.
I hope that everyone in Congress would be willing to honor the legacy
of Juneteenth, not only through remembrance but through action.
I grew up in the civil rights movement. At the tender age of 3, I was
in the stroller at the March on Washington, so fighting for civil
rights is not just talk because I understand that faith without works
is dead.
What I do understand is that, in this body, we profess to be
Christians. We profess to be people of faith. Yet, at the same time, on
one hand we profess to be Christian, and on the other hand, we want to
break down the barriers, break down all the hard-earned work, break
down the legislation, and break down the policies, the safety nets, and
all the work that has been done through the civil rights movement. We
want to break it down. Individuals who have worked and toiled in this
country to be free yet again, in 2026, are fighting for their freedom.
In this country, we are under a great assault on our ability to be
able to vote. Democracy stands right now in a place where I never ever
thought that I would ever see again in my lifetime.
All the civil rights leaders and people who gave their lives,
volunteers and foot soldiers, for the ability for African Americans and
all people of color in this country to be able to exercise their right
to vote is completely under assault. I truly believe that our civil
rights leaders would roll over in their graves if they knew the assault
on democracy and what we are dealing with in today's Congress.
It is unconscionable what is happening here. It is despicable what is
happening here. It is deplorable what is happening here.
The Constitution affords every man and woman the ability to be able
to exercise their right to vote, to exercise what is important to them.
It gives them the ability to be able to live the American Dream and
work for the American Dream to be educated, to be given affordable,
quality healthcare, and to live in affordable housing. This Congress
and the United States continue to strip away the voting rights of
African Americans. That is truly at stake.
Where is the promise? What promise is being kept by this Constitution
and by the Declaration of Independence?
The words of the Congressional Black Caucus continue to fall on deaf
ears here in these Chambers. Shame on America. Shame on the body.
I pray every single day. I pray over every Member in this body. I
pray for wisdom for our colleagues. I pray for the strength to stand
and defend democracy and do the right thing. That is because democracy
is for everyone in the United States, and we don't get to pick and
choose who has access and who doesn't.
They don't get to pick and choose who gets to have a vote and who
doesn't. We don't get to pick and choose who has healthcare and who
doesn't. We don't get to pick and choose who has access to a good
public education and who doesn't.
I, along with the Congressional Black Caucus, will stand and defend
our ability to be able to hold dear and hold fast to what was promised
to us by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
As the great woman from Virginia just mentioned, we are not backing
down.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland
(Mr. Ivey).
Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Virginia for hosting
this Congressional Black Caucus special hour. I also thank my colleague
from Georgia, who just finished speaking. I appreciated the powerful
statement that she made and the insightful comments that she shared
with us tonight.
Juneteenth is just around the corner. Juneteenth was a special day
for me. It is one that we celebrated my mother's birthday on
frequently, and certainly, as a child of North Carolina and Virginia,
had special meaning, as well. I have had a chance to enjoy those days,
but the meaning of them has evolved over time for me.
{time} 2030
I was a child in North Carolina, Rocky Mount, North Carolina in the
late 1960s. It was still segregated. Across the street was Booker T.
Washington High School, and I lived on the side of the tracks that the
African-American community lived in back then.
The schools were segregated. Stores, many of them, you couldn't try
on clothes if you wanted to go get fit. There were a lot of restaurants
you couldn't go into and if you did want to go in, they tried to make
you go in through the backdoor. That is where we stood as a nation when
I was a child.
Then, as you heard from my colleague from Virginia, the movement that
came along that grew into the civil rights movement changed all of
[[Page H3985]]
that for the United States of America. We had gone from a real dark
time after the North withdrew from the South, the return of Jim Crow,
the growth of the Ku Klux Klan, the return of almost a version of
enslavement return to the South in the late 1870s and it got worse over
the next decades.
We had lynchings. It was a regular tool of terrorism in the South
during those days. It was used to keep people in line if they did
something radical or dramatic, like trying to vote or even register to
vote. That is what we were in. That is what my grandfather was born
into in North Carolina in 1895.
Things changed over time, thank God. We grew as a community, the
African-American community. We started schools, historically Black
colleges like Howard University and others that gave us a chance to
gain an education, even in a segregated environment. We started groups,
fraternities, sororities, especially for kids going to college.
The Divine Nine we call them now. I belonged to Kappa Alpha Psi. It
was one of those sources of strength for our community. We had to
develop our own newspapers since White newspapers wouldn't cover what
was going on in the Black community.
We developed alternative structures that allowed us to train people
to become doctors and the like. The NAACP grew and became a force for
change, fighting against segregation in America and especially against
lynching.
All of that grew over the years. We didn't have a lot to work with.
Segregation was hard, and the further South you went, the harder it
was. But ultimately in the late 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama, there was
something called the Montgomery bus boycott that took off.
The Montgomery bus boycott was led by the faith community there, the
African-American faith community, because the buses in Montgomery if
you were African American, you were supposed to sit in the back. If the
front of it filled up and new White people got on to the bus, if you
were African American, you were expected to get up and give your seat.
That was the nature of the way things were in those days. A woman named
Rosa Parks decided she had had enough and she refused to get up and
give her seat up.
Now, actually, that wasn't just a coincidence. This is something that
people had been preparing for for years. The churches, the NAACP, and
the like, and something called the SCLC, Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, all were working together to try and figure out how can we
push back and fight back against this. How can we try and change this?
The boycott began and just coincidentally, a young pastor almost
fresh out of divinity school came down from Boston. His father had been
a pastor in Atlanta and he wanted to become a pastor like his father,
but he didn't want to try and start in Atlanta, so they sent him to
Montgomery. And just at the time that this young man got there, this
man named Martin Luther King, Jr., they were looking for new leadership
to lead the bus boycott and lead the faith community forward.
This is a man who was still writing his Ph.D. dissertation while he
was leading the bus boycott. He was married and beginning a family
while he was leading the bus boycott. If that wasn't enough, the hate,
the anger, the opposition rolled up against him and his house, for
example, was bombed while he was at church one day preparing for the
Sunday service.
The house was blown up. He knew that his wife and his child were
there and he didn't know if they were dead or not until he was able to
run back home and see for himself.
When he got there, he saw a group of people who were angry and they
wanted revenge. They wanted to go strike back and retaliate against the
people who had bombed his house.
Dr. King said that is not how we do things. That is not the Christian
way. That is not the way we are going to lead this movement. We are
going to fight hate with love. We are going to fight violence with
nonviolence, and we are going to win the hearts of these people and
change the course of this Nation.
Now, it took a long time to get there. The bus boycott took a year.
People were walking to work day in and day out in the snow and the rain
and the cold, but they kept walking. They tried to create ways to ferry
each other to and from where they had to go. Many of them were working
as domestics, for example. They had tried giving each other rides and
they put this whole structure in place to permit that.
The bus boycott was successful. The bus company thought they could
hold out, that they could outlast them, but as it turned out, they were
wrong. One woman said, ``My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.''
They came together and won that bus boycott, and it was the first
giant step with respect to the civil rights movement. There were other
forces that had gathered prior to that, there was the desegregation of
the Army.
My father-in-law fought in World War II. There were colored units
back then, and he rose up to the level of captain. He left the service,
re-enlisted for ground combat during the Korean war and went to fight
again. There were many others like him who put their lives on the line.
Many of them gave their lives in the fight to protect our country.
One of the things my father-in-law told me was that when they had
come back from Europe, he was stationed in Italy--they put a lot of
what they called Negro troops then in Italy to fight there--and when
they were bringing them back, many of the German soldiers had turned
themselves into them because they didn't want to have to turn
themselves into the Russians. One of the ironies was that when they got
back to the United States, the Black troops who had fought to protect
and defend the United States of America, had saved Europe from
totalitarianism and in many instances had given their lives and lost
their friends and colleagues in this fight still had to ride in the
back of the train behind these German soldiers. That is where America
was.
Mr. Speaker, when the civil rights movement moved forward and gained
momentum and culminated, as you heard from my colleague from Virginia,
in the crown jewel of the civil rights movement was the Voting Rights
Act. Other pieces came along. The Civil Rights Act was there, too. The
Fair Housing Act, all those things came together. But the Voting Rights
Act was the key tool to the transformation of the South in this
country.
John Lewis was one of the key players in that movement. I saw a play
about him. It is called ``Young John Lewis.'' They ran it here in D.C.
a couple weeks ago, and I went to see it. The culmination of the
``Young John Lewis'' play is the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
It was supposed to be a cause for celebration. It is supposed to be
the climax, the high-water moment of this play, but a strange thing had
happened just a few days before.
The United States Supreme Court, the Trump majority in the United
States Supreme Court, had essentially eviscerated the Voting Rights Act
that they were supposed to be celebrating.
Instead of there being a big cheer in the audience, there was this
sad kind of pall that came over the crowd, including me. The voting
rights piece, that first Supreme Court opinion that I mentioned just a
few days ago, Callais, Justice Alito said he is not totally gutting it.
He is just changing the standard of review, the legal ways to analyze
those cases.
{time} 2040
So we thought, let's hope and see how it plays out. It just turns out
that there was another case in Alabama 3 years before where the Supreme
Court had basically supported the Voting Rights Act and affirmed it. A
three-judge panel had been appointed, because there were more
challenges coming from the State. That three-judge panel consisted of
one Clinton appointee, but two Trump appointees. That three-judge panel
had said, after weeks of hearings--I think it was like 80 witnesses,
800 exhibits, extensive, detailed, thorough hearings--and that three-
judge panel, which including two Trump appointees, concluded that the
lines that had been drawn by the Republicans in Alabama constituted
intentional racial discrimination. There was an intentional effort to
dilute Black Alabamians' voting strength.
They said that the map that the Republicans were trying to put in
place--and, remember, this was triggered by President Trump's call to
Texas a few
[[Page H3986]]
months earlier saying: I need five seats. I will come back to that in a
minute.
The three-judge panel said: Nope, you still can't put that map in
place. There were two seats, one is held by our current colleagues
Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures. It is the Shomari Figures' seat they
were going after. They were trying to draw it out. The three-judge
panel said that seat should stay. Then the United States Supreme Court,
in an expedited manner, overturned the decision of that three-judge
panel, even though they had just said a few weeks ago that intentional
discrimination will not be talented in drawing these lines.
Even though there is something called the Purcell Rule, which the
Supreme Court had honored for decades, the Purcell Rule is: You know
what? We are not going to be doing these election decisions when we get
too close to an election, because it can cause problems in how you
implement the election. So we won't do that.
They violated that even though the three-judge panel said one of the
reasons they didn't want to overturn the lines at that point was
because it would cause chaos in the election. The Supreme Court did it
anyway.
The Trump majority on the Supreme Court threw it out. Justice
Sotomayor wrote a dissent. In that dissent she says: ``Now the Court is
squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it has caused and the harm
it has wrought. Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial
discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos.''
So that is where we have come from Juneteenth: The gutting of the
Voting Rights Act.
It is not just in Alabama, unfortunately. I was down in North
Carolina, back in my home State. I have got a colleague named Don Davis
who is running for reelection. North Carolina is playing the exact same
game as Alabama is. In fact, they did it a few years ago. This will be
the third election that Congressman Davis has to run where they have
tried to change the lines to make it harder for him to win.
When they did it in 2024, they knocked off three other Democrats who
had been my colleagues when I first served here. The Republican
legislature drew out those three Democrats and put them in districts
that were predominantly Republican so that they couldn't win. We lost
those three seats, but that is not enough. They want to take more. They
went after Don Davis' district and cut the African American voting bloc
in half there.
Now, I went down because I want to try and help him win anyway. I
know that area a little bit. I know that those voters were angry that
there is an attempt to disenfranchise them in that way, but I think
they see past the moment and understand the importance of what we need
to do right now.
There are challenges coming up this November. One of the main
challenges is to show that these, I think, illegal efforts to
disenfranchise voters in this way, African American voters who were
explicitly protected by the Voting Rights Act--which was explicitly
based on the 14th Amendment, which was explicitly written to address
all of the challenges and dangers and awful history that we created
with slavery and segregation--all of that we have to fight back.
Now, the Trump administration is not going to make it easy. In
addition to appointing a Supreme Court that would strike down the
Voting Rights Act, they have gutted the part of the Department of
Justice that is supposed to be protecting voting rights enforcement.
When Mr. Trump came into office, one of the first things he did was
force out all but two of the attorneys in the voting rights section.
Only two were left. In addition to that, they threw out all of the
voting rights cases under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. He did
that immediately. He did that before the Supreme Court had even ruled.
He was telegraphing exactly what he wanted to have happen with this.
He is not done there. Let's keep in mind a couple of things. In
addition to gutting the unit at the Department of Justice that is
supposed to protect voting rights, he is making aggressive moves on it.
Remember, he did that speech where he talked about nationalizing
elections? Well, we all know that Federal elections are run by the
States. The Constitution says that. He still announced that anyway.
He also sent the FBI to do a raid on the Fulton County Department of
Elections to seize the ballots. Now, I have never seen anything like
that.
At first he started out, he sent requests--demands, actually, to 47
States saying: Hey, we want all your voting files. The States resisted,
and you can imagine why, especially States where Democrats are at risk
of the type of gerrymandering that we have seen in Alabama and North
Carolina.
He said he needed to do it based on the theft of the 2020 election.
Now, he is still acting like he actually won the 2020 election. This
would be kind of like if the team that lost the Super Bowl last year
was still running around acting like they actually won it. That is what
Donald Trump is doing. Six years later, even though all of the
statements they have made about this have been discredited, they have
lost in over 60 courts all across the country, including courts with
Republican appointees, including courts that are managed by the
Republicans with Trump appointees on them. Over and over and over again
they say: Nope, you actually lost that election. He won't give it up.
I don't think it is really about the 2020 election anymore. I think
in his mind it is really about 2026 and what they might do in November.
We need to keep in mind a couple of things, based on the history that
you heard from my colleague from Virginia--and we know history can
repeat itself--there is a saying that the arc of the universe is long,
but it bends toward justice. The thing to remember is it does not bend
on its own. It only bends in the right direction when we make it bend
in the right direction.
On Juneteenth this year, the Obama library is going to open in
Chicago, a long time coming, an exciting moment. I think it was in some
ways a crowning achievement for the United States of America. At least
it was viewed that way not just around the world but by many here in
the United States. I am going to be excited to see what they have done
and what they have built.
The legacy is the most important part of what that is about. The
legacy of that Obama election, of what we can do and where we can go is
something I think we need to focus on.
I watched a little bit of a special about it, and they played some of
his speeches back from that era. The thing that is interesting is they
are so different from the speeches we get from the White House now.
They are not about division. They are not about anger. There is no
hostile attacks on reporters, even when he disagreed with them. There
is no threats to wipe out an entire civilization. There is no wars
started, just because somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
There is none of that stuff.
As he said, there is no red States. There is no blue States. There is
the United States of America.
{time} 2050
There is a call to a certain type of America that he made that
reminded me of John Kennedy's in the 1960s. It reminds me of Dr. King's
in the civil rights movement in the late 1960s.
Many of our greatest leaders made the statements that pulled us
together, that brought us together, despite the divisions we had in our
history, realizing that, as they say, we might have come over here on
different ships, but we are all on the same boat now. We need to find a
way to start working together again, but we can't keep undermining the
rights of other people. We can't keep disrespecting the rule of law. We
can't keep undermining democracy if we are going to move in that
direction again.
For this Juneteenth, my hope is that the America that we aspire to
will get back in the front window and that we will start moving in that
direction again and that we can start raising ourselves and our Nation
up to those high standards again.
To my colleague from Virginia, I thank her for doing this. I
appreciate the work that she has done for the Congressional Black
Caucus. I thank my colleagues in the caucus for the work that they do
day in and day out. Here in the House, I thank my colleagues. Even when
I disagree with them, we can find a way to disagree without being
disagreeable. We can find a way
[[Page H3987]]
to remember that we are all supposed to be fighting for the same
things, that we can turn to each other and not on each other at this
critical moment.
Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is
remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Moore of West Virginia). The gentlewoman
from Virginia has 15 minutes left.
Ms. McCLELLAN. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,
as I mentioned, the history of our country is how we the people
includes everyone. It is how to reconcile the ideals upon which this
country was founded as articulated so beautifully by Thomas Jefferson,
with the reality upon which this country was founded, as we grapple
with the fact that Thomas Jefferson in writing that all men were
created equal and endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not even include in
that sentiment the human beings who labored, enslaved by him treated as
property, including his own children.
I think of our country as a family, the American people as a family.
Like any family, you cannot heal from family trauma if you don't talk
about it, if you don't acknowledge it, if you don't acknowledge the
pain of it, if you don't forgive and move forward.
Unfortunately, in our country, too often when we get close to that
moment, when we get close to that healing moment, when we get close to
that ideal becoming true for everyone, there is a backlash.
Every time in American history that we have begun to address the
impact of over 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow on African Americans,
there is a backlash.
The first one was the backlash to reconstruction. During
reconstruction, when formerly enslaved men gained the right to vote
after gaining citizenship, after being promised equal protection under
the law, after electing members of their community to Congress--over
22--and after electing hundreds from their communities to State
legislatures across the country, gaining social, political, and
economic power, working together, in some cases, with White
communities--like the Readjuster Party in Virginia, which worked
together to create what was, at the time considered--with a small p--
the most progressive Constitution that Virginia ever had, where it
finally promised, for the first time, every child in Virginia the right
to a free public education. And the old power structure said: We have
got to break that up.
To break up that coalition, the backlash used three things:
propaganda, the lie of White supremacy, the lie of the Lost Cause
narrative, that began to ignore what was actually said in articles of
succession and say: Well, no, the war was about something else. It
wasn't about slavery.
It began to use the lie of the Lost Cause narrative in iconography
that said we need to put Black people back in their place by putting
these gigantic monuments in front of the courthouse that says: Justice
for all, except for you.
Then when they didn't get the message from the propaganda, they said:
We are going to use violence through racial terror lynching, and 6,500
people, Black people, were murdered by White mobs through racial terror
lynchings from 1865 through the 1960s--1968. Because if they don't get
the message of the propaganda, we are going to use violence. We are
going to use a mob that will start a race riot when people in Louisiana
are trying to register to vote. We are going to use voter suppression
because in a country--in a government of the people, of the people, for
the people, the government will reflect the perspective and, therefore,
meet the needs of the people who participate. If we can keep certain
people from participating, we don't have to meet their needs.
So whether it was the literacy test that my great-grandfather had to
take in Alabama in 1901, the character requirement he had to meet by
finding three White men to vouch for his character to register to vote;
whether it was the poll tax that my father and my grandfather had to
pay in Tennessee; or voter intimidation and threats, the voter
suppression is always part of the backlash.
We are in that backlash now, but the difference is the people who
lived through Jim Crow are dying off. There is a concerted effort to
keep their stories out of our schools, out of our public places, out of
our museums through an executive order. Yet, history is a funny thing.
Those stories, just like through all the traditions that were handed
down generation to generation, we will continue to tell these stories,
no matter how many executive orders are written. No matter how many
orders the National Park Service is given to erase the names of people
enslaved who worked at the President's house in Philadelphia, we will
tell their story. We will work to continue to eliminate the impact of
over 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow, even though we have an
administration that wants to dismantle the progress we made in doing
so, because that impact didn't go away with the wave of a magic wand
with the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act. Now that we see
efforts to unwind it, we are going to fight back.
I will close with this: I can't help but think of John Lewis. We are
also going to come up on the anniversary of his passing. In his final
words to us, John Lewis said: ``Democracy is not a state. It is an act,
and each generation must do its part to build what we call the Beloved
Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.''
{time} 2100
My parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents fought for
that beloved community, and they used the ballot to elect people who
would help to build that beloved community.
Now, the Supreme Court has basically said that the medicine for the
cancer of racism has worked, so let's get rid of the medicine, that we
don't need it anymore, but the cancer is still there.
We are going to fight back as the Congressional Black Caucus. We will
not let our voices be silenced. We will not let our history be erased.
We will not let our votes be suppressed. We will continue to fight
until every American has the right, unencumbered by this government, to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When we say in the Pledge
of Allegiance, ``liberty and justice for all,'' it finally becomes
true.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. SEWELL. Mr. Speaker. I rise today with my colleagues in the
Congressional Black Caucus at a moment of profound consequence for our
democracy--a moment when Black representation in America is under
attack.
What we are witnessing is about more than just a court case. It is
about more than just a political disagreement. We are witnessing a
coordinated effort to dismantle the hard-fought gains of the Civil
Rights Movement and take us back to the Jim Crow era.
Mr. Speaker, this is a five-alarm-fire.
When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in the Callais
decision, they told states that it is okay to dilute the voices of
Black voters if it means helping Republicans cling to power.
Think about that. They gave states a license to discriminate in the
name of partisanship.
Now, unless Congress acts, we could be on the verge of witnessing the
largest reduction in Black representation since Reconstruction.
In my home state of Alabama, the consequences are already being felt.
For years, Alabama's congressional maps have been at the center of a
legal battle over the rights of Black Alabamians. Federal courts
repeatedly found that state leaders intentionally discriminated against
Black voters and illegally diluted their political power. In fact, the
congressional map Alabama is now seeking to implement was struck down
not once, but twice, for intentlonally discriminating against Black
voters.
Despite those findings, the Supreme Court has now cleared the way for
Alabama officials to put that very map back into place.
Let that sink in.
Alabama now has a congressional map that federal courts determined
was drawn with discriminatory intent--a map with only one seat out of
seven where Black voters can elect candidates of their choice.
In a state where Black voters make up nearly one-third of the
electorate, that is unacceptable.
I want to be clear--This is not just an issue for Black voters. This
is an attack on every American. They may be targeting Black voters
today, but no one is safe when a handful of extremists can decide whose
voices matter and whose do not.
This is about whether every American, regardless of race or zip code,
will have an opportunity to make their voice heard. It is about whether
we are willing to learn from our Nation's history or repeat our
mistakes.
[[Page H3988]]
The struggle for voting rights has never been easy. From Selma to
Montgomery, brave Americans shed blood, sweat, and tears to secure the
right to vote. They marched, they organized, and some gave their lives
so that future generations could participate fully in our democracy.
We owe it to them to continue that fight.
That is why I will never stop working to restore the full protections
of the Voting Rights Act. It is why we must revise and pass the John R.
Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act without delay.
Here is what those state legislators need to understand: They can
draw unfair maps, but they cannot silence our voices.
Come November, we will send a message that cannot be ignored--that
every voice deserves to be heard in our democracy.
We will not give up. And we will not go back.
____________________