[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2206-2209]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HONORING THE NAACP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Mimi Walters of California). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the 
gentleman for the recitation. It was very touching, very moving, and I 
just want to commend him for keeping the memory alive. Thank you so 
much.
  Madam Speaker, I am honored tonight to thank the leadership and to 
thank the Members of Congress who have been supportive of this 
resolution

[[Page 2207]]

that we bring to the floor for a discussion. This is a resolution that 
honors the NAACP.
  This resolution is not new to the Congress of the United States of 
America because, in 2006, it actually passed the House of 
Representatives by a voice vote and then, in 2007, it passed the House 
of Representatives by a vote of 410-0; in 2008, 403-0; 2009, 424-0; and 
2010, 421-0.
  I thank the leadership and the Members of this body for the support 
it has shown to the NAACP with the passage of this resolution through 
the years.
  I am honored to be a member of the NAACP. I take great pride in my 
membership. I have a life membership in the NAACP. I have been 
fortunate enough to serve on the board of the Houston branch of the 
NAACP. I served for nearly a decade as president of the Houston branch 
of the NAACP, and I have been the beneficiary of the NAACP's works. The 
NAACP has made America the beautiful a more beautiful America.
  Tonight, Madam Speaker, I would like to continue this discussion of 
the NAACP. I would like to say just a few words first about the 
founding of the NAACP. It was founded on this day 106 years ago--106 
years ago--when approximately 60 people answered what was called the 
call.
  It was a clarion call for persons to come together to talk about and 
discuss a means by which lynching could be dealt with. Of the 60 
people, about seven were African Americans. The NAACP is not now and 
never has been an organization that has been supported by only African 
Americans or what some might call a Black organization. It has always 
been an integrated organization.
  After having been founded in 1909, February 12, 106 years ago, the 
NAACP did embark upon a campaign to end lynching in the United States 
of America, a sad chapter in our history, but one that we must never 
forget because we never want to see these things happen again.
  As things are doing well now in this area of lynching--we don't have 
lynchings in the United States of America, generally speaking, we 
understand the adage--the premise--that if you don't remember your 
history, there is a possibility that it can be repeated.
  For this reason, we talk about these things. They are a sad chapter 
in our history, but it is a chapter that we dare not forget. The NAACP, 
in embarking on this campaign to end lynching, published a publication 
in 1919 that was styled ``30 Years of Lynching in the United States.''
  It is interesting to note that lynching was so prevalent in the 
United States that the great Billie Holiday--the great Billie Holiday--
sang a song, she was known for this song, styled ``Strange Fruit.''
  This was a song that she could only sing in certain places because 
this was one of the first songs that dealt with the protest movement 
around this notion of civil rights and human rights for African 
Americans. This song was first presented in New York at a nightclub, 
the Cafe Society.
  When she first presented the song, she had much fear and much 
consternation because she wasn't sure how it would be received. After 
she finished singing the song, there was a silence. For a moment, she 
thought that it would not be well received.
  Then one person, as is the case with many movements, one person 
started to applaud and, after that, one person, then another and 
another. Then she received a very loud ovation for this song.
  I am going to share the words to the song with us tonight because 
this song is probably one of her signature songs, but it is also a song 
that predated ``We Shall Overcome,'' which was a part of the civil 
rights movement, the contemporary civil rights movement.
  These are the words to the song, and you will have some appreciation 
for why I am mentioning it to you. The words are:

     Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
     Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
     Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
     Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

  Of course, we know that this song is referring to the lynchings that 
were taking place. In fact, between 1882 and 1968, according to 
Tuskegee Institute, there were 3,446 African Americans lynched in the 
United States of America--a sad chapter in our history.
  This is why the NAACP came into being. In part, it was established to 
ensure political, educational, social, and economic equality for all 
persons--for all persons--not just African Americans, not just Blacks, 
not just as we were known at that time, Negroes, but for all persons; 
and it was established as well to eliminate racial hatred and racial 
discrimination--all noble challenges and challenges that we would 
easily embrace today.
  At that time, when the NAACP was founded, because of lynchings that 
were taking place and because of a desire to make sure that all persons 
were treated fairly and equally, it was a difficult thing to do.
  The NAACP, I am proud to say, has a history of being on the right 
side of right. It is consistently on the right side of right. The NAACP 
was on the right side of right in 1948 and 1953 when it filed and won 
the lawsuits Shelley v. Kraemer and Barrows v. Jackson. These lawsuits 
dealt with restrictive covenants.
  There was a time in this country when persons could restrict the sale 
of property to people simply because of who they were, the hue of their 
skin, restrict the sale of property to people because of the way they 
looked.
  These two lawsuits were taken to the Supreme Court of the United 
States of America and were won. If the truth be told, we sleep where we 
sleep and we live where we live because of the NAACP, because the NAACP 
was on the right side of right.
  What is interesting about this proposition of being on the right side 
of right, Madam Speaker, is the notion that when you are what I call--
what some others would call a Monday morning quarterback, but what I 
call a hindsight quarterback--a hindsight quarterback, that is my 
phrase--when you are a hindsight quarterback, it is easy to be on the 
right side of right because others have had to suffer the slings and 
arrows associated with being on the right side of right at the right 
time, in the right place, in the right space. The NAACP has dared to be 
on the right side of right when it was very difficult to be there.
  In 1948 and 1953, when Shelley v. Kraemer and Barrows v. Jackson were 
litigated, it was not easy to be on the right side of right, to talk 
about integrating neighborhoods, to talk about selling property to 
anybody if they could pay the price of the cost of the property.
  Being on the right side of right means something in the country that 
we know and love. It means something in a country that stands for the 
proposition of liberty and justice for all, a country that stands for 
the notion that government should be of the people, by the people, and 
for the people.
  It means something to be on the right side of right; hence it means 
something to have an organization like the NAACP that will step forward 
using litigation when necessary, protests when needed, but always a 
peaceful means to a just end. The NAACP has been there and has always 
been consistently on the right side of right.
  The NAACP was on the right side of right in 1954 when it won the 
lawsuit Brown v. Board of Education. I would daresay that we eat where 
we eat because of the NAACP and we go to the schools that we go to 
because of the NAACP.
  The NAACP took that lawsuit to the Supreme Court under the leadership 
of the Honorable Thurgood Marshall with the aid and assistance of the 
honorable Charles Hamilton Houston and won that lawsuit, placing the 
NAACP again on the right side of right, overturning decades of 
injustice with one single lawsuit. The NAACP made a difference in the 
lives of all Americans.
  The truth be told, if we did not have the NAACP, we would have to 
create it because you need an organization like the NAACP. You need an 
organization that is willing to take a bold stand in difficult times, 
an organization that understands that it is not easy to be on

[[Page 2208]]

the right side of right, but that understands also that a great country 
has to move forward, and to do so, it must be on the right side of 
right.
  Let me pause for just a moment because we have had a great sage come 
into the Chamber tonight. He is, of course, the sage from New York. We 
know him as the Honorable Charlie Rangel.
  I know him as a friend to all of humanity, a person who has 
consistently been on the right side of right, a person who speaks with 
clarity, with force, sincerity, and he actually calls them as he sees 
them, without any fear and without any belief that there are 
consequences that can be of great harm to him, such that he should not 
speak truth to power.
  Tonight, I am honored to ask my dear friend if he would join me and 
give his commentary on the NAACP.
  I will now yield to the gentleman from New York City, the Honorable 
Charles Rangel.
  Mr. RANGEL. Let me thank my friend and colleague for giving me an 
opportunity to thank an organization that, unfortunately, so many 
Americans, Black and White, have taken for granted.
  Earlier today, I was sitting on the floor next to one of my 
Republican friends from the South, and we were talking about Selma. He 
had recently seen the motion picture, and he was shocked that something 
like this could have happened.
  Me being an oldtimer, I was surprised that he did not know that those 
things had gone on, but it was the graphics in the motion picture and 
the change in attitude that people have.

                              {time}  1830

  And it reminded me that this happened in my lifetime, to see somebody 
from the same culture, the same background, now seeing things obscene 
that should never happen in our great country.
  Now, if people could have stood up 60 years ago and subjected 
themselves as some people did in Selma and put their life on the line 
in the early sixties, as John Lewis and so many others did--because I 
would like to remind everybody I did the march too, but it was after 
Bloody Sunday. I was not thinking about putting my life on the line. 
And putting my feet on the line for 54 miles was an ordeal for me, 
because I didn't fully understand the concept and the threat to human 
life that was taking place in the sixties.
  Imagine what it was when the NAACP was formed. Imagine the threat 
that Blacks and Whites had formed this organization to bring us 
together during the time that slavery had just been over and this 
organization has continued. I cannot begin to tell you, Congressman, at 
my age, the number of civil rights organizations and political 
organizations and religious organizations that I have worked through in 
my lifetime.
  But no matter what the internal debate is, no matter what state our 
Nation is in, the NAACP has managed, during very rough economic times 
and hard political times, to keep going step by step and never falling 
back. And when the whole country and parts of the world were rejoicing 
over the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act--and we see what 
recently happened to the Supreme Court. Why was nobody surprised that, 
once again, in front of the Supreme Court, organizing the entire Nation 
to do the right thing was the National Association of Colored People?
  And so I just wish that, without solicitation, we can find some way 
to thank those faceless people who never get their names and pictures 
in the newspaper, go out to the meeting, active in voter registration, 
and whenever anybody in any community wants to go there for a rally, 
the first thing they do is call the local branch of the NAACP to make 
certain that someone would show up. Because the NAACP doesn't do these 
things for press conferences. They don't do it because they want their 
names in the newspaper. They have too much credibility and have done 
too much work and have suffered too much to risk their reputation for 
something like that.
  So I am so grateful and appreciative that you would focus in the well 
of the Congress, and certainly we all admit that notwithstanding what 
Dr. Martin Luther King and so many others that we don't know their 
names have done to bring some sense of equality in our great Nation, 
that the NAACP was there 100 years ago doing the same thing and then 
hoping and praying that they can improve the quality of life for all of 
us. And guess what? They are still doing it.
  Thank you for your commitment.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Thank you very much, Mr. Rangel, for your very 
eloquent recitation. Once again, you have risen, you have stepped up to 
the plate, and we are most appreciative that you took a moment to come 
over and be with us. Thank you very much.
  If I may now, we have another Member of the Congress with us from the 
18th Congressional District in the State of Texas. She is a voice for 
the voiceless, a very powerful voice, not only in Congress, but across 
the length and breadth of the country when it comes to human rights, 
human dignity, and human decency.
  I am honored to have my colleague with me tonight, the Honorable 
Sheila Jackson Lee, who is adjacent to me, the Ninth Congressional 
District in Houston, Texas. The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Congressman, thank you so very much. And, again, my 
greatest appreciation for your annual tribute to the NAACP. We are 
reminded of its great history. You are the carrier of this dream and 
this celebration. We are appreciative that you have come to this 
Congress and done many things, but you brought us to a moment every 
year to be able to honor this storied organization 106 years old. So 
let me thank my good friend Congressman Green, my next-door neighbor in 
Houston, and a friend of many of the same friends.
  We know the work of the NAACP local chapter in Houston, Texas. Now, 
the leading President is, as I call him, Dean James Douglas. Many 
presidents before, of course, have ably served our local chapter, but 
we come today to acknowledge the grandness of the NAACP. And as my 
colleague, Congressman Rangel, just mentioned, it is an organization 
that is everywhere in all ways.
  It is well to note that many of the successes that we have had in 
freedom, justice, and liberty have come about through the NAACP. 
President Truman was the first President in 1948 to speak to the NAACP. 
But it was not just an oration, if you will. The NAACP seeks to work, 
collaborate, and get things done. It was that close relationship with 
President Truman that generated a commission that in the late 1940s, 
after World War II, where soldiers came home to a second-class 
citizenship.
  Soldiers who left the hills and valleys of America, the farms, and 
the urban centers of America, African Americans, colored boys, who went 
into World War II came out as a second-class citizen. You will hear 
stories of soldiers coming back home being forced off trains or in the 
back of the train or the back of the bus, not being offered food at a 
train station, even with the uniform on.
  So heroes that had fought in the war and managed to survive and come 
home still came to a segregated America. It was in that backdrop that 
President Truman spoke to the NAACP, and they called for a commission 
to address the question of civil rights in America. Out of that came 
the--because it was in the realm of World War II, out of that came an 
important announcement that really, I think, was the predecessor to 
desegregating America. That, of course, was the executive order that 
desegregated the United States military. That is the clout of the 
NAACP.
  Through the years--through the years--the NAACP certainly has a long 
history, starting in its early birth. But I want to carry it forward 
into the 1950s and into the utilization of Thurgood Marshall. Now it is 
called the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that separated it out, but it was 
these lawyers of the NAACP that rose to defend those in the civil 
rights movement who were the foot soldiers and the actors of the civil 
rights movement, meaning acting on the issue, the activists. And

[[Page 2209]]

they had the cerebral opportunity, if you will, the cerebral leaders, 
the lawyers, that came together to provide them the legal armor that 
they needed. Certainly we know that Thurgood Marshall had a very fond 
expression and appreciation for the NAACP.
  So we come through these years in the 1950s and the 1960s. And the 
kind of continued support that the NAACP provided in lasting and 
embracing--lasting and embracing--so it embraced the Southern Christian 
Leadership Conference, which I had the privilege of working for. It 
embraced various other organizations. It embraced the various faiths in 
our community, and it embraced any organization that was moving toward 
justice, as Dr. King said, bending that arc toward justice. The NAACP 
was there with its many chapters, and it was there with providing the 
education of so many of these individuals that were, in fact, I call 
them, foot soldiers in every hamlet of America.
  Now we come, if I may cite him, in the civil rights movement, again 
joining with those marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, being a 
mighty vehicle, if I might, a lobbyist. I understand Congressman 
Clarence Mitchell was called the 101st Senator. He was a lobbyist for 
the NAACP. He was on the cutting edge of every single civil rights 
legislation for a period of, I believe, 40 years. I may be exaggerating 
the timeframe, but he was there for the '64 Civil Rights Act, there for 
the '65 Voting Rights Act. Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP was an 
advocate, not a lobbyist, on behalf of the NAACP, and met and stood, if 
you will, to debate not on the floor of the Senate with the Strom 
Thurmonds and others who had a different opinion about desegregation of 
this country.
  Let me take note of the fact that today I had the privilege of seeing 
an unveiling of a stamp in honor of Robert Robinson Taylor, the great-
grandfather of Valerie Jarrett. And what I would say is that even his 
success in the backdrop of being the first graduate of MIT, African 
American graduate, you can be assured that the NAACP was moving along 
to add to the civil rights aspect of the great outstanding success and 
leadership that this gentleman, Mr. Taylor, has shown.
  So the NAACP has been there to make a pathway. The NAACP has been 
there to embrace. The NAACP has been there to collaborate. The NAACP 
has been there to stand with you when you need them to stand with you.
  I close by indicating that we have had a challenging year of 
addressing issues of criminal justice reform, and I am very grateful 
that the NAACP has also taken up this issue and will be a partner on 
this issue of criminal justice reform, working with many of us as we 
commit to America--not just African Americans--that we will answer the 
question dealing with justice, equality, and liberty.
  I pay tribute, finally, Mr. Green, to the leader of ACT-SO, who lost 
her life, in the local chapter of the NAACP. I want to honor her and 
thank her for the years that I knew her and her service to young people 
in the ACT-SO program in Houston, Texas. To her family, I want to thank 
her so much for the work that she did and the lives that she touched.
  That is the NAACP. Tonight, I say, ``I am the NAACP.'' 
Congratulations for 106 years.
  Thank you, Mr. Green, for yielding.
  Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Thank you very much. I applaud you for your 
very kind words about the NAACP, and I also compliment you for giving 
us additional examples of the NAACP being on the right side of right--
the right side of right.
  With the history that it has for being on the right side of right, 
one can imagine 100 years from now, when someone looks through the 
vista of time back upon this time, when the NAACP is the champion right 
now for voting rights, who will be on the right side of right when we 
look back?
  I think that is important for us to consider because we never want to 
be on the wrong side of history, but we are in a situation right now 
where it will take some courage for some people to be on the right side 
of right as we tackle this question of voting rights, voting rights 
that have been diminished by the evisceration of section 4 of the 
Voting Rights Act, which emasculated section 5 of the Voting Rights 
Act, which means that there is no coverage. We have to now find a way 
to reinstate section 4 of the Voting Rights Act.
  Who will be on the right side of right? Who will be with the NAACP? 
When we look back 100 years from now and we examine these circumstances 
and we understand that it was not easy to be on the right side of 
right, who will be there so that we can accomplish, again, what the 
NAACP has fought for for many decades in this country?
  I thank you, again, Madam Speaker. I thank the leadership for this 
opportunity. Our time has expired, but our energies are still with us, 
and we will continue to be a part of this great august organization 
known as the NAACP, as it continues to be on the right side of right.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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