[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 4] [House] [Pages 5257-5260] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]THURGOOD MARSHALL UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 130) to designate the United States Courthouse located at 40 Centre Street in New York, New York, as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse''. The Clerk read as follows: H.R. 130 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. DESIGNATION. The United States courthouse located at 40 Centre Street in New York, New York, shall be known and designated as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse''. SEC. 2. REFERENCES. Any references in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to the United States courthouse referred to in section 1 shall be deemed to be a reference to the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse''. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks) and the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Shows) each will control 20 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks). Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 130 designates the United States courthouse at 40 Centre Street in New York City as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.'' Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated cum laude from Lincoln University in 1930 and graduated top of his class from Howard University School of Law in 1933. Upon graduation from law school, Justice Marshall began his legal career with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As chief counsel, he organized efforts to end segregation in voting, housing, public accommodations, and education. These efforts led to the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown versus Board of Education, which declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. In 1961, Justice Marshall was appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Kennedy and four years later was chosen by President Johnson to be the first African American Solicitor General. Two years later, in 1967, President Johnson nominated Justice Marshall to become the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court, where he served with distinction until his retirement in 1991. Justice Marshall died in 1993 and laid in State in the Supreme Court building, a rare and privileged honor. This is a fitting tribute to an honored jurist and a great historical figure. I support the bill and urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. SHOWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. [[Page 5258]] Mr. Speaker, H.R. 130 is a bill to name the Federal courthouse located at 40 Centre Street in New York City in honor of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) for introducing the bill and for his steadfast support of this legislation. The career and character and contributions of Judge Marshall are without equal. His struggles for equality and dignity for all people were of historical proportions. In 1961, President John Kennedy appointed Marshall as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals. Marshall was the first African American to receive such an appointment. President Johnson appointed Marshall as Solicitor General, and in 1967 he was appointed to the United States Supreme Court where he served until 1991. As my colleagues know, Justice Marshall was born and brought up in Baltimore and graduated first in his class from Howard University Law School. The brilliance of his legal career is highlighted in the famous 1954 Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka case in which ration segregation in the United States public schools was declared unconstitutional. Justice Marshall's visions for the future required constant and personal commitment by each citizens to racial equality. Justice Marshall has given to the American public an enduring symbol of hard work, determination, fairness, and honor. Mr. Speaker, I am greatly honored and pleased to support H.R. 130. Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. SHOWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), sponsor of the bill. Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Mississippi for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 130. I am proud to be the sponsor of this bill, and this is a bipartisan bill, to name the Federal courthouse at Foley Square in Manhattan in New York City as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.'' By naming the Foley Square courthouse after Justice Marshall, Congress would send a signal to the American people and the entire world of the importance of the principle of equality under the law. As my colleagues know, the late Thurgood Marshall was not only the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court, he also was one of the greatest trial and appellate lawyers in the history of our Nation. Through his skill, advocacy, and dedication to the cause of civil rights, he led the charge for equality, not only for African Americans, but for all Americans. Thurgood Marshall was born July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. After attending public schools in Maryland, he received his bachelor's degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and his law degree from Howard University right here in Washington, D.C. where he graduated first in his class. After handling a variety of private legal cases, Thurgood Marshall was appointed in 1936 as Special Counsel to the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Only 3 years later, Marshall founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the great protectors of civil rights in our country's history. I would urge my colleagues commemorating the life of Thurgood Marshall today to cosponsor H. Con. Res. 33, my legislation, which commemorates the 90th anniversary of the founding of the NAACP. While at the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall won 29 of 32 cases he argued before the United States Supreme Court. Most prominent of Marshall's victories of course was Brown versus Board of Education, that famous 1954 case, in which the Supreme Court struck down the separate but equal policy that was used to justify public school segregation that had been in effect since 1896. While at the NAACP, Marshall also won important cases against discriminatory poll taxes, racial restrictions in housing, and whites- only primary elections. In September 1961, after such a distinguished career with the NAACP, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall as the first African American to sit as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was later chosen by President Lyndon B. Johnson as the United States Solicitor General, also the first African American to hold this position. On June 13, 1967, President Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. As the first African American Associate Justice, Marshall became known for his heartfelt attacks on discrimination,, unyielding opposition to the death penalty, and support for free speech and civil liberties. As my colleagues know, the House passed this bill last year. We are considering it again today because it did not come to the floor of the Senate by the end of the session. I am hoping the Senate will immediately take up this bill after the House passes it. Mr. Speaker, it is important to note the New York State Senate, the New York State Bar Association, and the New York State County Lawyers' Association, of which Marshall was a long-time member, have endorsed this bill. It is bipartisan, strong bipartisan support. The courthouse at 40 Centre Street in New York has gone unnamed since its construction in 1935. I believe that identifying this courthouse with Justice Marshall would be a fitting commemoration of his life's pursuit of justice and equality under the law. The Thurgood family is delighted to have this important courthouse named after Justice Thurgood Marshall. I urge my colleagues to offer this tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall and to support H.R. 130. I just want to thank my colleagues, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks), and the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Wise), for their cooperation and strong support for this bill. I appreciate their collegiality very, very much. Mr. SHOWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking Democratic member on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, we gather here in this Chamber and with this bill before us to pay tribute and to honor a giant of the law and of the Constitution. In honoring Thurgood Marshall, we honor and pay tribute to all that is good and great in the history of democracy in America, for he personified what our American war revolution was all about, what the framers of the Constitution intended in writing this great and durable document, that all people are created equal and are entitled to equal justice under the law and in this Constitution. Thurgood Marshall believed in that theme, believed in that promise, and made his life a crusade to make the promise of the Constitution alive, living, practiced in this democracy. What we say here cannot add to the glory that is his and to the respect that generations owe him. We can only supplement what was a great, courageous, and inspiring life. By naming a building, we hope that we in stone, in structure, and in all that goes on inside this great courthouse, perpetuate the ideals that made up the career and the life and the purpose of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Mr. SHOWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton). Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the ranking member for their attention to this naming bill. How appropriate it is that the courthouse at Foley Square would be named for the man who sat there as a Second Circuit Judge and went on to the highest court, Thurgood Marshall. Of course the Foley Square courthouse is [[Page 5259]] one of the preeminent courthouses in the United States in part because of some of the notorious cases that have been decided there, but also because of where it stands and what it has meant in history. So to name a preeminent courthouse after a preeminent lawyer, a preeminent litigator, a preeminent Justice seems just right. In point of fact, Justice Thurgood Marshall was preeminent in so many ways, it is difficult to know now how he will be best remembered. He spent many years on the Court. He was Solicitor General at an important high point of our history when the government was litigating cases involving race and other matters of signal importance to the constitutional development of our law. Yet, I do not believe that the Justice will be remembered preeminently as a Justice or as a lawyer. I believe those are too small to encase his memory. I believe he will be remembered for what he did for American law itself. We are at a proud point in American law because the words equality under justice means something. {time} 1230 We did not get to that point, the law did not get to that point by itself. Equality under law was an empty phrase when Marshall began to practice law and when he and his cohorts at the NAACP, later to become the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, began to attack discrimination at its core. Despite the carnage of the Civil War, the fact is that slavery was replaced by a system of law called Jim Crow. It was that system that Thurgood Marshall set his sights upon. He embarked upon the mission of filling the empty vessel, the words ``equality under law,'' with true meaning. Marshall led a brilliant litigation strategy. Today, ``separate but equal'' is totally discredited, but it took years, gnawing at the roots of that doctrine, to finally overthrow that doctrine with Brown v. Board of Education. When President Johnson sought to appoint Thurgood Marshall to his two important positions, he faced an uphill battle, and if I may say so, from members of his own party. And yet our law and our courts are richer because that battle was fought, and because Thurgood Marshall fought his battles for our law and for African Americans; ultimately, for all Americans, who now all accept ``equality under law,'' with many more coming forward to claim that right than those who happen to be black. For lawyers like me, Thurgood Marshall was nothing less than a role model, because there were so few African American lawyers in the 1960s when I came to the bar. He has since become not only a role model for my generation but an American legend in the law. It is most appropriate that he be honored in this way. Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 130, to designate the court house on Centre Street in New York City as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Court House.'' It is particularly auspicious that this legislation appears before the House of Representatives this week when much of the nation will learn, for the first time, of one of Justice Marshall's early cases on behalf of oppressed members of our society. As a young attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Thurgood Marshall went to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in September 1944 to observe the largest mutiny trial in the history of our nation. The accused men were sailors who had refused to continue loading highly explosive munitions at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine because a terrific explosion just a few weeks earlier had, without warning or explanation, killed 320 of their colleagues and destroyed this important naval facility. It was the largest home front loss of life of the war. Marshall was concerned about the Port Chicago courts martial because all the accused men were blacks, men relegated to loading munitions on ships rather than firing them at the enemy solely because they were black. Men who lived in segregated housing, ate in segregated mess halls; men denied the post-traumatic leave typically granted. Indeed, benefits to the survivors of those black men killed in the explosion were reduced from $5,000 to $3,000 when southern senators learned the victims were blacks. The Navy, dismissing the protests of the NAACP and others over the hypocrisy of asking segregated blacks to fight fascism abroad, denounced their sailors as having ``exhibited the normal characteristics of negroes,'' and prosecuted them for mutiny. Fifty stood their ground and were sentenced to long jail terms, later reduced in the aftermath of the war. Following their convictions, Thurgood Marshall launched an impassioned effort to force the government to rescind the convictions, and he won some concessions: two dozen pieces of evidence were thrown out as tainted, but the convictions stood, and continue to stand today. The Navy of the 1990s has proved equally resistant to revisiting the Port Chicago convictions. Directed by Congress to re-examine the case in 1992, Secretary of the Navy John Dalton admitted that there was ``no doubt that racial prejudice was responsible for the posting of African- American enlisted personnel to the loading at Port Chicago.'' Then Secretary of Defense William Perry agreed that ``prejudice in the first instance resulted in the assignment of African-American sailors to hard, dangerous work, but segregated them and denied them the dignity accorded to others in uniform.'' Like Dalton, however, Perry refused to overturn the convictions because, they asserted, the pervasive racism in the Navy and at Port Chicago was not documented in the actual trial proceedings. I wonder how the courts ultimately would have treated Rosa Parks if they had refused to consider the context in which she defied the law and launched the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s. I wonder how history might be different if judicial officers reviewing records of sit-ins at lunch counters did not consider the environment in which those acts of defiance occurred. The same is true of the Port Chicago case, and Thurgood Marshall knew it over a half century ago. Men who battled to enlist in the Navy to defend their country against fascism and racism were treated like second class citizens because of their race. They got second class jobs, second class training, and they got second class justice. For decades, virtually all of the surviving Port Chicago ``mutineers'' have suffered their unjustified humiliation in silence, much as they suffered the anguish of official segregation and Navy policies that placed them in extreme risk without even a modicum of training. Bolstered by books and news coverage a decade ago, a few of these men--several now deceased--worked with Members of Congress to secure the Navy reviews and to successfully pass legislation in 1992 creating the Port Chicago National Memorial in California that honors the men who served and died at that facility. A decade-long effort to secure the exoneration of over 250 black sailors who refused to resume loading the ships is gaining steam. A national law firm, Morrison and Foerster, has taken up the pardon appeal of Mr. Freddie Meeks of Los Angeles, and will hopefully be able to represent additional survivors and the families of those men who passed away without ever knowing that this day of reconsideration was coming. The media also is finally paying attention to the travesty that followed the tragedy. The History Channel recently broadcast an hour- long show, produced by CBS, and the Learning Channel is set to air its own account on March 30th. NBC will nationally broadcast a made-for-TV movie, produced by actor Morgan Freeman, on March 28 that tells a fictionalized account of the Port Chicago story. So it is fitting that, as the nation studies the Port Chicago case and the important role Thurgood Marshall played in challenging these unjust convictions, we meet here today to dedicate this building in his memory. Port Chicago was an early, and largely unknown, item in a distinguished legal and judicial career, and Justice Marshall surely deserves the honor we are about to confer on him. Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill. This bill designates a United States courthouse in New York City as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.'' Thurgood Marshall worked for not only African Americans but for all Americans to establish and perfect a fundamental structure of individual rights. He succeeded in creating new protections under the law for women, children, prisoners, and the homeless. These groups owe a debt of gratitude to Thurgood Marshall for the increased protections that they enjoy as American citizens. Mr. Speaker even the press had Marshall to thank for an expansion of its liberties during the century. Marshall was America's leading advocate of civil rights and led a revolution that has left an indelible mark on the American society as a [[Page 5260]] whole. First as an attorney and then as the nation's first African American Justice on the Supreme Court, Marshall worked towards the integration of the races. He believed that through integration equal rights under the law could become a reality for all Americans. In 1940, the NAACP created the Legal Defense and Education Fund, with Thurgood Marshall as its director and Counsel. During his tenure he coordinated the efforts of the NAACP to end racial segregation. His efforts culminated with the landmark 1954 decision Brown versus The Board of Education, which declared segregation of public schools illegal. President Johnson would appointment Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States, making Justice Marshall the first African American justice to sit on the Court. As a justice Marshall worked to advance educational opportunity and to bridge the wide gulf of economic inequity between blacks and whites. He became a champion of affirmative action and other race conscious policies as a means to correct the damage from the horrors of racism. Marshall's work as an attorney and as a justice would provide the framework for improvements in the equal rights of all Americans. President Johnson said at the time of appointing Marshall to the Supreme Court that it was ``the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.'' I say to you that in naming this Courthouse for Thurgood Marshall this body is using the right name and sending the right message. Thurgood Marshall's name is synonymous with the struggle for equal rights in America. His legacy as an advocate for equal rights for all Americans is one that should be emulated, remembered and cherished. Mr. Speaker; I ask my colleagues to support this measure and vote to designate this courthouse as the ``Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse.'' Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, today, we honor Thurgood Marshall. Marshall was born and raised in the Congressional District I represent--Baltimore City, Maryland--and actually lived in a home which is about eight blocks from where I live now. We both attended Howard University and, more significantly, he was once turned away form the law school I attended and graduated from--the University of Maryland. As such, I am especially proud to honor Thurgood Marshall, as I share a common path with this historic figure. In designating the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in New York City, the nation also honors and praises this man for his civil rights achievements as a lawyer and for reaching the pinnacle of the U.S. justice system as the first African American Supreme Court Justice. I believe, however, that he should be revered most for his courage and independent judiciary and for breathing life into the text of the Constitution. He worked tirelessly to guarantee all Americans equality and liberty in their individual choices concerning voting, housing, education, and travel. It is an honor to recognize a man whose career is a monument to the judiciary system, and who has inspired others to continue his quiet crusade. I urge support for this legislation. Mr. SHOWS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Goodlatte). The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Franks) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 130. The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed. A motion to reconsider was laid on the table. ____________________