[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 13]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 18865-18866]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  HONORING JUDGE FRANK M. JOHNSON, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. EARL F. HILLIARD

                               of alabama

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 29, 1999

  Mr. HILLIARD. Mr. Speaker, We are a country of strong men united by 
great philosophies, yet we are divided by realities that built this 
country by stripping a people of their land in order to call it our own 
and by enslaving another people to a lifelong labor of blood and sweat 
to build our homes.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today, on the brink of a new millennium, not to 
point out the immaculate flaws of our cherished American dream. Rather, 
I rise to salute Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., a man who Time Magazine 
in 1967 deemed ``one of the most important men in America'' and whose 
life exemplifies the Biblical statement ``To whom much is given, much 
is required.''
  Judge Johnson is a man who dedicated more than four decades of his 
life to ensuring

[[Page 18866]]

that no man be limited by separate facilities that inherently violate 
his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He is an 
American icon, a legendary Federal jurist from Alabama whose historic 
civil rights decisions forever shattered segregation in a ``Jim Crow'' 
South. His monumental ruling striking down the Montgomery bus-
segregation law as unconstitutional created a broad mandate for racial 
justice that eternally eliminated segregation in public schools and 
colleges, bathrooms, restaurants and other public facilities in Alabama 
and across the South. Judge Johnson was an innovator and a crusader for 
all mankind who will be remembered eternally for giving true meaning to 
the word justice.
  Today, I rise to honor Judge Johnson for helping to bring equality to 
the American dream; I honor him for bringing justice to an inhumane 
system of law; I honor him like Martin Luther King, Jr., for allowing 
justice and righteousness to roll down like a mighty stream.

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