[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7291-7293]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    AUTHORIZING USE OF EMANCIPATION HALL FOR UNVEILING OF STATUE OF 
                           FREDERICK DOUGLASS

  Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
concur in the concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 16) authorizing the 
use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center for the 
unveiling of a statue of Frederick Douglass.
  The Clerk read the title of the concurrent resolution.
  The text of the concurrent resolution is as follows:

                            S. Con. Res. 16

       Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives 
     concurring), That

     SECTION 1. USE OF EMANCIPATION HALL FOR THE UNVEILING OF 
                   FREDERICK DOUGLASS STATUE.

       (a) Authorization.--Emancipation Hall in the Capitol 
     Visitor Center is authorized to be used for an event on June 
     19, 2013, to unveil a statue of Frederick Douglass.
       (b) Preparations.--Physical preparations for the conduct of 
     the event described in subsection (a) shall be carried out in 
     accordance with such conditions as may be prescribed by the 
     Architect of the Capitol.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from 
Michigan (Mrs. Miller) and the gentlewoman from the District of 
Columbia (Ms. Norton) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Michigan.


                             General Leave

  Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that 
all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks 
on the concurrent resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Michigan?
  There was no objection.
  Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of Senate Concurrent Resolution 16, 
authorizing the use of Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center 
for the unveiling of a statue of Frederick Douglass, a great 
abolitionist. Frederick Douglass is a pivotal figure in American 
history who had an unyielding dedication to equal rights, the abolition 
of slavery, and the enhancement of women's suffrage. His brave actions 
and compelling writings inspired and forever changed this grateful 
Nation.
  Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass escaped to New York in 1838 
disguised as a free uniformed sailor. Upon achieving his own freedom, 
he quickly and unwaveringly turned his life's mission to seeking 
freedom, justice, and equality for all. Frederick Douglass inspired in 
African Americans the fundamental that one's achievement cannot be 
limited by one's color and that the American Dream is within reach for 
all Americans, regardless of race.
  Over a century has passed since his death, and yet his contribution 
to American society is very much alive today. His tireless dedication, 
brilliant words, and inclusive vision of humanity continue to inspire 
people of all races. In considering the remarkable achievements of 
Frederick Douglass and his contributions to our rich history, his 
presence within the United States Capitol will honor this institution 
and serve as endearing testimony to this Nation's struggle for freedom 
and for equality.
  I want to thank the Senator from the State of New York, Mr. Schumer, 
for introducing this concurrent resolution, as well as my colleague, 
Ms. Norton from the District of Columbia, for her work on this, and I 
would certainly urge my colleagues to support it.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. NORTON. I rise in strong support of Senate Concurrent Resolution 
16.
  I would like to begin by thanking Chairman Miller for her help in 
bringing this resolution to the floor. I also thank Ranking Member 
Brady for his longstanding commitment to placing a District of Columbia 
statue in the United States Capitol. When he chaired the committee, it 
approved my bill that would have given the District two statues in the 
Capitol, the usual practice. But, we are pleased to have our

[[Page 7292]]

first statue and are grateful to the House leadership for permitting 
this bill on the floor today. We especially thank Senators Schumer and 
Durbin for their help in getting this resolution, as well as the bill 
authorizing the placement of the Douglass statue in the Capitol, passed 
in the Senate. The District of Columbia has no Senators so we're 
fortunate we have distinguished allies like Senators Schumer and 
Durbin.
  Like the residents of the 50 States, the residents of the District of 
Columbia have fought and died in all our Nation's wars and have always 
paid Federal income taxes. Unlike the residents of the 50 States, 
however, District of Columbia residents are still fighting for their 
equal rights as American citizens. Since 2002, one component of that 
fight has been to have statues representing the District of Columbia 
placed in the Capitol, like the States, which fulfill every obligation 
of citizenship, as the District does.
  D.C. residents chose Douglass to represent them in the Capitol not 
only because he is one of the great international icons of human and 
civil rights; but for us, Douglass is especially important because he 
was not content to rest on his historic national achievements alone. He 
knew where he lived and was deeply involved in the civic and political 
affairs of the District of Columbia.
  Douglass, a strong Republican, served as Recorder of Deeds of the 
District of Columbia, as United States Marshal here, as a member of the 
D.C. Council--its upper chamber then--appointed by the Republican 
president at the time, Ulysses S. Grant. Douglass was also a member of 
the Board of Trustees of Howard University for 24 years. Douglass made 
his home in the Anacostia neighborhood of southeast Washington, which 
is now the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, administered by 
the National Park Service.
  In choosing Douglass, it was important to our residents that Douglass 
also dedicated himself to securing self-government and voting rights 
for the residents of the District of Columbia. Many Americans may not 
know that D.C. residents have only rarely had even nonvoting 
representation in the Congress, or a local government, and even today 
have no vote on the floor of the House and no Senators, although our 
residents pay Federal income taxes like everybody else and fight in all 
the Nation's wars like everybody else. The city had both home rule and 
a delegate for a brief period during Reconstruction and then was 
without any home rule government or any representation in the Congress 
for over 100 years, until the 1970s.
  In his autobiography, ``The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,'' 
Douglass commented on the unequal political status of his hometown, the 
District of Columbia, and of its residents. Most of what Douglass wrote 
in the 19th century holds true today.
  I am quoting Douglass from his autobiography:

       These people are outside of the United States. They occupy 
     neutral ground and have no political existence. They have 
     neither voice nor vote in all the practical politics of the 
     United States. They are hardly to be called citizens of the 
     United States. Practically, they are aliens, not citizens but 
     subjects. The District of Columbia is the one spot where 
     there is no government for the people, of the people, and by 
     the people. Its citizens submit to rulers whom they have had 
     no choice in selecting. They obey laws which they had no 
     voice in making. They have plenty of taxation but no 
     representation.

                              {time}  1420

       In the great questions of politics in the country they can 
     march with neither army, but are relegated to the position of 
     neuters. I have nothing to say in favor of this anomalous 
     condition of the people of the District of Columbia, and 
     hardly think that it ought to be or will be much longer.

  Mr. Douglass did not mince his words.
  The Douglass statue in our Capitol will recognize the universality of 
his dedication to human rights and democratic rights. His statue in the 
Capitol will remind District of Columbia residents that they, too, will 
partake of these values one day. His statue will offer the same pride 
that other citizens of our country experience when they come to the 
Capitol and see memorials that commemorate the efforts of their 
residents and their significant contributions. And the Douglass statue 
offers other Americans the opportunity to see the residents of their 
Nation's Capital honored as well in their Capitol.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, again I want to thank my 
colleague from the District of Columbia for her very eloquent words. We 
are all looking forward to the unveiling of the statue of this 
remarkable American that is such a critical component of our proud 
history.
  With that, I would urge all of my colleagues to support this Senate 
concurrent resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. Con. 
Res. 16, which authorizes the use of Emancipation Hall for the 
unveiling of a statute of Frederick Douglass. It is fitting and proper 
that Emancipation Hall is the venue for the dedication of a memorial to 
one of this nation's greatest abolitionists and orators, and one of the 
closest friends and advisors of the Great Emancipator himself, Abraham 
Lincoln.
  Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near 
Easton, Maryland, on February 18, 1818, and lived the first 20 years of 
his life as a slave before escaping to freedom in 1838 through the 
Underground Railroad. With the assistance of abolitionists, he 
resettled in New Bedford, Massachusetts and changed his name to avoid 
recapture by fugitive slave bounty hunters.
  Frederick Douglass had no formal education but he recognized the 
power of education and taught himself to read and write. He would go on 
to become the publisher of ``The North Star,'' a leading abolitionist 
newspaper, whose motto was ``Right is of no Sex--Truth is of no Color--
God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren.''
  Frederick Douglass also authored one of the seminal works in American 
history, the influential autobiography ``Narrative of the Life of 
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,'' which explained with 
unsurpassed eloquence how slavery corrupts the human spirit and robs 
both master and slave of their freedom.
  Frederick Douglass devoted his life to the struggle for freedom, 
human dignity, and the full measure of civil and human rights for all 
men and women, famously observing that ``where there is no struggle, 
there is no progress; power concedes nothing without demand. It never 
has and never will.''
  Frederick Douglass was also one of America's greatest orators. He was 
the only African American to attend the first women's rights convention 
in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, where he spoke powerfully and 
forcefully in favor of women's suffrage. In his moving address, he said 
that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if women 
could not also claim that right and suggested that the world would be a 
better place if women were involved in the political sphere:
       In this denial of the right to participate in government, 
     not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a 
     great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of 
     one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the 
     government of the world.
  On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered the address for which 
he is perhaps best known. The theme of that address to the Ladies of 
the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society was ``What to the slave is 
the 4th of July?'' In that speech, he described in stark and vivid 
detail the gap between America's principles and practices, its 
aspirations and the actual condition of people's lives, especially 
those persons of African descent. In answering the question, ``What to 
the slave is your 4th of July,'' he said:
       [A] day that reveals to him, more than all other days in 
     the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the 
     constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your 
     boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, 
     swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and 
     heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted 
     impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow 
     mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and 
     thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, 
     are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and 
     hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would 
     disgrace a nation of savages.
  But Frederick Douglass was not bitter at America, he was determined 
to make her better. And he did through his writings, lectures, 
speeches, and civic activism. Most of all, the bond of friendship he 
forged with President Lincoln helped the nation summon the will to

[[Page 7293]]

accept civil war as the price to be paid to abolish American slavery 
and emancipate from bondage millions of slaves and their descendants.
  On April 14, 1876, the eleventh anniversary of the Lincoln's 
assassination, Frederick Douglass was the keynote speaker at the 
dedication of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln in 
the City of Washington, in which the Great Abolitionist spoke for all 
former slaves in paying tribute to the Great Emancipator:
       Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; we saw him . 
     . . in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in 
     view of that divinity which shapes our ends . . . we came to 
     the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption 
     had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. [He] was at 
     the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest 
     sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, 
     must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever 
     abolished in the United States.
  After the Civil War, Frederick served as U.S. Marshal for the 
District of Columbia and later as the first African American Recorder 
of Deeds. In 1888 at the Republican National Convention, he became the 
first African-American to receive a vote for nomination as president of 
the United States by one of the major parties. From 1889 to 1891, 
Frederick Douglass served his country as Minister-Resident and Consul-
General to Haiti. He died in Washington, D.C. on February 20, 1895, at 
the age of 77.
  Mr. Speaker, the life of Frederick Douglass affirms what is great 
about our country. Here was a man who overcame the conditions of his 
birth and the disadvantages of his race to become one of the towering 
figures of his age. His life proves that Margaret Mead was right when 
she said:
       Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed 
     citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing 
     that ever has.
  With the unveiling of the statute in memory of Frederick Douglass, 
fittingly located in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol, the story 
of this great man who led such a consequential life will be made known 
to all who visit for generations to come.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller) that the House suspend the 
rules and concur in the concurrent resolution, S. Con. Res. 16.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the concurrent resolution was concurred in.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________