[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 926-927]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          BLACK HISTORY MONTH

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, Wednesday, the 1st of February, begins Black 
History Month; and on that day I introduced a proposal to have a 
Congressional Gold Medal issued to civil rights

[[Page 927]]

workers--not to each one individually, but collectively.
  Black History Month celebrates the history of African Americans in 
our Nation, and a Gold Medal for civil rights workers is so appropriate 
because the people who fought for civil rights had to fight their own 
government to get the rights that were embedded in the Constitution for 
others, which specifically said that they were three-fifths people and 
that slavery should exist in this country, and the Jim Crow laws that 
were passed and approved by this Congress and by the State legislatures 
continued that for another hundred years.
  So the people like John Lewis and Robert Filner, who serve in this 
House, the people who engaged in the sit-ins and the marches, that 
challenged our system and showed it to be wrong and forced it to change 
itself, not just Dr. King but the Julian Bonds and the farmers and the 
Ennises and the Belafontes, they deserve recognition. They should be 
recognized by this Congress for what they did because they took a wrong 
in America and they righted it, and they continued to serve and make 
this country greater for all people based on the principles of the 
United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which 
don't really fulfill their destinies without the efforts of the civil 
rights workers who've made the work of Jefferson and our Founding 
Fathers true.

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