[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12300]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY OF MELVIN HERBERT EVANS

  (Ms. PLASKETT asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I speak on 
behalf of the centennial anniversary of the birth of the Honorable 
Melvin Herbert Evans.
  This celebration of Governor Evans' 100th birthday is both timely and 
symbolic. Evans was born in 1917, months after the transfer of the 
Virgin Islands from Denmark to the United States, when locals had no 
citizen rights and no mechanism for which they could have their own 
elected representation.
  A son of the soil, he was educated on St. Croix, valedictorian of his 
high school class on St. Thomas, and in 1944 earned his medical degree 
from Howard College of Medicine. He returned to St. Croix and was 
eventually Commissioner of Health of the Virgin Islands.
  In 1969, Evans was appointed Governor of the Virgin Islands by 
President Richard Nixon, earning him the distinction of being the 
territory's last appointed governor, but more importantly, the 
territory's first Black native governor.
  In 1971, he became the governor elected by the people of the Virgin 
Islands after a 1970 law which allowed residents to elect their 
governor.
  In 1978, he was elected to the House of Representatives in the 96th 
Congress. And after leaving Congress, he was an Ambassador to Trinidad 
and Tobago.
  Governor Evans personifies the evolution of the political maturity of 
the Virgin Islands. His life and legacy symbolized not only the 
extraordinary achievement of Virgin Islanders--given little but 
striving and attaining much under the American flag--but also the 
political growth and progress of our Islands from colonial rule to 
self-governance.

                          ____________________