[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14741-14743]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    RECOGNIZING 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING 
         COMMITTEE AND THE NATIONAL SIT-IN MOVEMENT--Continued

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman who is the hero of the civil rights movement, a person who 
personally experienced the times of which we are speaking, who is, I 
believe, one of the founders of SNCC and a gentleman with whom we are 
privileged to serve and to know in America, who helped make America the 
country it is today and who is helping to move it forward to be the 
country that it needs to be, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).
  Mr. LEWIS of Georgia. I want to thank my colleague, my brother, and 
my friend, Mr. Cohen, for introducing this resolution with me. I want 
to thank the gentleman from Virginia, along with Chairman Conyers and 
members of the Judiciary Committee, for bringing this resolution to the 
floor tonight.
  Mr. Speaker, it is fitting and appropriate that we pause to recognize 
the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Student Nonviolent 
Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC. It grew out of the sit-in 
movement and the efforts of hundreds and thousands of young people who 
were standing up by sitting in.
  These young people put their bodies, their hearts, and their spirits 
on the line to end racial discrimination and segregation in public 
accommodations. We were working to liberate the soul of a nation. It 
was the young people--black and white, Jewish and Christian, from the 
North and the South--coming together as a circle of trust and a band of 
brothers and sisters to change America forever.
  As a young student in the Nashville Student Movement, people like Jim 
Lawson taught us the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolent 
resistance. He taught us the way of love. While we trained and learned 
and prepared to sit in, the Greensboro sit-ins happened. That was the 
spark that ignited the courage and the passion of students around the 
Nation.
  On the day of the first Nashville sit-in, 124 of us gathered at the 
First Baptist Church, and we walked through downtown Nashville, two by 
two, quiet and solemn, well-dressed and well-mannered. My group went to 
Woolworth's. We sat at the counter, and we were told that we wouldn't 
be served. The lunch counter was closed early, and they turned out the 
lights, but we sat there all day, quietly--some of us reading, some of 
us doing our homework. We sat in again and again that week. It was the 
first time that I was arrested for civil disobedience. No sooner would 
one group be arrested than another group would take our place at the 
lunch counters.
  Some of us were beaten, and the images of violence were broadcast 
around the Nation. Soon, the jails were full. The process of 
desegregation had begun. For months, all around the country, students 
sat in and stood in. The sit-ins spread around the South like wildfire. 
We marched; we sang; we prayed. Along the way, many were beaten, 
jailed, and some even died in the struggle.
  During that time, 126 student delegates from 58 sit-in centers and 12 
different States came to the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, 
North Carolina. That was the first meeting of what would become known 
as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC.
  SNCC did the hard, nitty-gritty work of organizing and mobilizing 
people in the heart of the Deep South to attempt to register to vote. 
From the sit-ins to the Freedom Rides, from Freedom Summer voter 
registration drives to the March on Washington, SNCC was there.
  By 1963, at 23 years old, I had been arrested 24 times. I had been on 
the Freedom Rides. That year, I also became the chairman of SNCC.
  SNCC was made up of people like Bob Moses and Bob Zelner, Julian Bond 
and Charles Sherrod, Bernard Lafyette and Diane Nash, Ruby Doris Smith 
and Fannie Lou Hamer, Howard Zinn and Ella Baker.
  These young people, the students, carried the movement into the heart 
of the Deep South, and America is a better place because of them and 
the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We hope that 
they will inspire the next generation to continue to build the beloved 
community. It is a society based on simple justice that values the 
dignity and the worth of every human being.
  I ask and urge all of my colleagues to join us in commemorating the 
50th anniversary of the founding of SNCC and the sit-in movement.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my staff for working on this 
resolution, especially my legislative director, Michaeleen Crowell.

                              {time}  0030

  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, I have had occasion before to listen to 
Congressman Lewis address this topic. Each time I enjoy doing that, and 
appreciate it wouldn't be appropriate for me to follow words after his, 
and so I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COHEN. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Houston, Texas 
(Ms. Jackson Lee).
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Thank you very much to the manager of this 
bill, and thank you for allowing me to rise to salute our colleague, 
Congressman John Lewis, and the list of honorees that he listed just a 
few minutes ago, part of the founding foundation of SNCC.
  So many of us associated ourselves as we looked to this group of 
young people who were willing to leave the comfort of classrooms around 
America, college classrooms, and begin to stand alongside of those who 
might have been considered elders in the movement.
  You know, there are many discussions about whether an entity or a 
group is a movement. We've heard that of late over the last couple of 
few years. But those of us who know the civil rights movement and know 
about SNCC, know about the SCLC, we really understand what a movement 
was and what it is.
  Fifty years is appropriate to commemorate a group that sacrificed 
themselves in the name of peace and nonviolence. Remember now, they 
were young people, energized, active, dedicated young people, full of 
energy, and certainly tempted by the violence that was around them. But 
because of leaders like John Lewis, their president, they were able to 
truly create a movement. They provided the legs and the genius of the 
sit-in movement as they went around the places of the South.
  You know, when you're young, you can sit for a long time. You have 
the tenacity to be able to withstand the back-bending sitting that it 
requires. You are able to draw upon your strength to not eat while 
you're sitting at the counter because they were denying you that right.

[[Page 14742]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. COHEN. I yield the gentlewoman as much time as she needs.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. And so there was a special role, and I 
thank the gentleman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 
and they have a very special place in history.
  I'm very grateful that this great leader and hero who is amongst us 
today, John Lewis of Georgia, was able to come to the floor, with the 
help of his great staff, to give us the opportunity to commemorate 
those who many may not know, but to realize that they truly were part 
of a movement. They had a cause, a belief, a passion, a determination 
and a commitment to the freedom of all people.
  Thank you to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and thank 
you, John Lewis.
  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I just want to reflect on why we're here. Mr. 
Lewis and I brought this resolution because it's the 50th anniversary 
of SNCC.
  There were other civil rights organizations as well, the NAACP, there 
was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, there was CORE, and 
there was SNCC. SNCC came about at a time when this country was ripe 
for change and helped really light the fire that ignited a Nation to 
see the injustices and bring about the change that came about in the 
sixties.
  When you think about what's happened in 50 years, that we're here on 
the floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, honoring the 
founding of SNCC, an organization when it was founded and it was 
exercising its purposes, it was sneered and jeered and disdained by 
most people in America because they were upsetting America. They were 
bringing about change that people didn't understand and people 
resisted. And there were a lot of people that thought that the people 
involved in these organizations should be jailed, they were un-
American, they were Communists, they were Socialists. That same 
rhetoric that you sometimes hear today you heard 50 years ago about 
these organizations that helped make America the more perfect Union it 
is, and to bring about the liberties that we really should enjoy, that 
Jefferson wrote about, but that were words on paper, not in practice.
  The people that were involved with SNCC and these civil rights 
organizations should be considered heroes and are heroes because they 
made America. They made America what it should be, the land of 
opportunity and justice and equality and liberty, and giving all people 
rights, which we didn't have.
  We had Jim Crow laws that were enforced by this Nation's laws, that 
Brown v. Board of Education changed. But before that, we had separate 
but equal, Plessy v. Ferguson, and it took the work of Thurgood 
Marshall and others to overturn that in the courts, and later to 
overturn it in these Halls of this Congress in 1965 and 1964, civil 
rights laws, civil rights laws that, unfortunately, caused the 
Democrats to lose their majorities and to lose their hold on the South 
because they did what was right for this country, and what that flag 
stands for and what this Nation stands for.
  So we're here today to honor the people and the organizations that at 
one time were sneered and disdained. But now we understand they were 
right. And sometimes you have to look back at history to understand who 
the heroes are and the direction this country goes in and where it 
should be.
  And so I respect Mr. Lewis. He was in the front line. He mentioned 
being arrested 24 times. He was beaten; he was hit. He was in the face 
of injustice in the picture of law and order, and stood up to it with a 
moral law that was higher than the law of the State of Alabama, and he 
made that law change.
  And so it's fitting, appropriate, and proper that we honor those 
heroes and the anniversary of that organization and that this United 
States Congress pass this resolution.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FORBES. Mr. Speaker, sometimes we have resolutions commending 
certain events and certain organizations where a few words can actually 
offer more respect than more. In this case, I think it's the life of 
Congressman Lewis that really puts this resolution into perspective for 
all of us. And once again, we just thank him for his service, thanks to 
this resolution. We urge our colleagues to support it.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. 
Res. 1566, which commemorates the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Student 
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Sit-In 
Movement. I want to give a special thank you to my fellow Georgian and 
the Dean of the Georgia delegation, Representative John Lewis for 
introducing this bill and for his own personal courage in participating 
in the Civil Rights Movement. Congressman Lewis is an American hero 
whose bravery has improved the quality of life for millions now and in 
the future.
  The sit-in movement was started by the extraordinary bravery of four 
young men in Greensboro, North Carolina. In February of 1960, these 
brave men started a movement that grew to more than 30 communities in 
seven different states in only one month's time. Even more impressive 
is how one and a half years after the inception of the sit-ins, the 
movement had attracted over 70,000 participants and a sit-in had 
occurred in every Southern state. The sit-in movement was truly a 
grassroots movement that showed the power of the cause and of the 
method. By choosing non-violent action, the sit-in movement was able to 
win hearts and minds across the country and led to the integration of 
restaurants, bus lines and public facilities all over the nation.
  The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is another 
extraordinary and influential group that played a major role in the 
civil rights movement. Founded in April, 1960, in Raleigh, North 
Carolina, the SNUG grew into a large organization that operated across 
the south. The group was inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins and began 
with an $800 grant from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 
(SCLC), founded in my home State of Georgia, for a conference where 
student activists could share experiences and coordinate activities. 
The conference was a success and was attended by 126 students in 12 
states. Julian Bond and Representative John Lewis, both from my home 
State of Georgia, were among the attendees at the April 1960 
conference. Congressman John Lewis went on to be the 3rd Chairman of 
the SNCC.
  The SNCC grew to prominence, and put themselves at great personal 
risk, by organizing ``freedom rides'' across the deep south. At least 
436 people took part in these Freedom Rides during the spring and 
summer of 1961. The SNCC grew into an organization of organizers 
dedicated to building community-based political organizations of the 
rural poor. After the Freedom Rides, the SNCC worked primarily on voter 
registration, along with local protests about segregated public 
facilities. As a final, monumental step, the group took the leading 
role in the 1963 March on Washington where more than 200,000 people 
marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for 
all citizens under the law. The next year, this group merged with 
Congress on Racial Equality and the National Advancement of Colored 
People with the primary goal of creating a desegregated political 
climate necessary to pass legislation to expand civil rights and voting 
rights for all citizens. I agree with Julian Bond when he said that ``a 
final SNCC legacy is the destruction of the psychological shackles 
which had kept black southerners in physical and mental peonage; SNCC 
helped break those chains forever. It demonstrated that ordinary women 
and men, young and old, could perform extraordinary tasks.''
  The civil rights movement changed the fabric of America. The movement 
led to the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965, which put an end to legal discrimination and 
segregation in this country. That battle for full equality is not yet 
over, however. As we move forward, we must remember the past and the 
resounding success of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and 
the National Sit-In Movement.
  As a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I am honored to 
address the House of Representatives on the fiftieth anniversary of the 
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the National Sit-In 
Movement. I walk in the footsteps of John Lewis and Julian Bond, great 
civil rights leaders from Georgia, whose heroism and bravery improved 
the lives of all Americans. Fifty years later, we all owe a debt of 
gratitude to the civil rights movement and I urge my colleagues to 
support this resolution.

[[Page 14743]]


  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my staff, Ms. Reisha Phills, 
who worked with me on this resolution with Mr. Lewis, and I yield back 
the balance of my time and ask that we pass this resolution here 
tonight.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 1566.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

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