[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 17310]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


            HONORING VICTORIA GRAY ADAMS CIVIL RIGHTS LEGEND

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, September 6, 2006

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize 
the life of an African-American civil rights legend, Mrs. Victoria Gray 
Adams. Victoria Gray Adams, civil rights activist, co-founded the 
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
  Victoria Gray Adams and fellow civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer 
and Annie Devine were chosen as the national spokespersons for the 
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and attended the 1964 Democratic 
Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Though their efforts to unseat 
the all-white Mississippi delegation were unsuccessful, these 
pioneering women and other members of the Mississippi Freedom 
Democratic Party's decision to challenge the Mississippi Segregationist 
political machine resulted in an integrated Mississippi delegation at 
the 1968 Democratic Convention and became a turning point in the civil 
rights movement. Mrs. Adams gave account of her civil rights 
involvement in the documentary ``Standing on My Sisters Shoulders'', in 
which she recalls the day in 1968 that she along with Fannie Lou Hamer 
and Annie Devine were the first African-American women to ever be 
invited as guest on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. She 
and others were honored at the 2004 Democratic National Convention for 
their trailblazing spirit and contribution to the civil rights 
movement.
  Mrs. Adams would later become the first woman from Mississippi to run 
for the United States Senate. Mrs. Adams helped change Mississippi 
politics significantly by guaranteeing a seat at the table to discuss 
the African-American agenda. Courageous and tenacious, Mrs. Adams had 
an unyielding commitment to the civil rights movement, and for that 
reason today Mississippi has the highest number of African-American 
elected officials in the nation.
  After attending Wilberforce University for a year, Mrs. Adams 
returned to Hattiesburg, Mississippi where she taught voter 
registration classes in the early 1960s and her fight for equality 
began. While Hattiesburg was 30 percent African-American, only 50 
citizens were allowed to register to vote. In 1962, Mrs. Adams 
dedicated herself to the civil rights movement when she became field 
secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She 
would later move to Thailand and labor on behalf of African-American 
United States servicemen for several years.
  In her own words, Mrs. Adams said she learned in 1964 that there were 
two kinds of people in grass-roots politics, ''those who are in the 
movement and those who have the movement in them.'' ``The movement is 
in me'', she said, and ``and I know it always be.''
  Please join me today in honoring a true civil rights pioneer, 
Victoria Gray Adams.

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