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Congressional Record
Proceedings, Debates of the U.S. Congress

February 27, 2017

115th Congress, 1st Session
Issue: Vol. 163, No. 34 — Daily Edition

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CBC/SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS
(House of Representatives - February 27, 2017)

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[Pages H1344-H1350]

From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                      CBC/SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rutherford). Under the Speaker's

announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from the Virgin

Islands (Ms. Plaskett) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of

the minority leader.

                             General Leave

  Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members

have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to

include any extraneous material in the Record.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the

gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands?

  There was no objection.

  Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Speaker, the CBC chair, Mr. Cedric Richmond, and

myself have a great honor that I rise today as one of the anchors of

the CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus' Special Order hour.

  For the next 60 minutes I have a chance to speak directly to the

American people on issues of great importance to the Congressional

Black Caucus, Congress, the constituents we represent, and all

Americans.

  During this hour, as Black History Month ends in the next day, we

believe it is important for this Congress and

[[Page H1345]]

for the people of America to hear about the great importance of

grassroots movements, which have been the fortifying effect of the

civil rights movements and other movements here in this country, and

have made this country very great.

  At this time I would yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr.

Richmond), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, who will speak

on this subject matter here on the floor.

  Mr. RICHMOND. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Stacy Plaskett from

the Virgin Islands, for taking this assignment and making sure that the

Congressional Black Caucus continues its conversation with America, and

to inform people on issues that are important to us, and also

reflecting on how important African-American history is, not just to

us, but to this country.

  It is African-American history that made this country great in the

first place. How our civil rights groups and people of the same kind,

not necessarily the same color, came together to make this a more

perfect union.

  So today what I wanted to do was actually talk about some of the

civil rights organizations that changed this country, made it better,

made it possible for me to be here, and compare and talk about some of

the movements that we see today that are making some of the same

differences for the next generation. It is just a shame that in 2017 we

are still fighting the same fights we fought 50 years ago for voting

rights, for equality, and all of those things.

  So when I say I want to talk about some of those organizations, I

want to talk about organizations like SCLC, the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference; or CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality; or

SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. They all played

an important role in launching grassroots movements that succeeded in

ensuring more equality for African Americans.

  Sit-ins, bus boycotts, marches, voter registration drives, and other

protests--these grassroots movements spread across the South, including

my home State of Louisiana.

  Let's just talk about one specific incident. September 9, 1960, the

Woolworth store lunch counter in New Orleans closed early.

  What was the reason?

  Seven members of the Congress of Racial Equality, five Black students

and two White students, decided to hold a sit-in demonstration to

protest Jim Crow. This was the first-ever sit-in in the city.

  The seven students were like so many other students across the South

at the time who were using nonviolent action to change the country. In

fact, let me read their names because many of them I knew.

  In fact, one, Jerome Smith, who was a Southern University student the

year before, is actually still on the battlefield in Louisiana not only

coaching Little League, but fighting for criminal justice reform and

financial and economic equality.

  You also had Rudy Lombard from Xavier University, a freedom fighter;

Archie Allen from Dillard University; Bill Harrell from Tulane; William

Harper, who was at LSU; Hugh Murray, who was also at Tulane; and Joyce

Taylor, who intended to enroll at Southern University.

  Fortunately, unlike others who held sit-ins, these seven Southern

students didn't have milkshakes thrown on them. They were not beaten or

bloodied. The seven students sat down at 10:30. Six police officers

were on hand to keep the peace and did not try to remove the students.

The students sat there determined for 2 hours.

  Because of the demonstration, Woolworth blinked first. They decided

to close early that day and they closed at 12:30, after the students

had sat there for 2 hours.

  These seven students and so many other civil rights activists are the

shoulders on which we all stand. Unfortunately, the fight for equality

is not over. We see this most clearly when we look at our criminal

justice system. To date, the organization Black Lives Matter has

launched a grassroots movement that has succeeded in exposing police

brutality and making it front-page news….

The following is a comment from Hugh Murray and not a part of the Congressional Record.  I do not agree with the speaker’s last paragraph re BLM and alleged police brutality.  The speaker tells some of the story of the first sit-in in New Orleans, which was then the largest city in the South.  On the sit-in, true,  we were not beaten, but because it was the first, we did not know what would happen.  A few years ago the NO Times Picayune ran a story with photos commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the event.  I noticed I was not wearing my glasses.  Then I remembered, I did not wear them because there was a possibility of being beaten, and I did not want to lose an eye.  We sat at the counter for hours, and then the NO DA appeared in person with a huge law book.  He read us the law.  Either we would leave the premises or be arrested.  We did not leave, and we were arrested, booked, and jailed.  We were bailed out that night.  Sometime later, when we sat together in the court, the judge threatened us with contempt for integrating his courtroom.  We were convicted of a felony.  It took years for the case to get to the US Supreme Court when we were vindicated.

OBAMA’S WIN, AMERICA’S LOSS: FOR AMERICA 2012 – LOST OPPORTUNITY, LAST OPPORTUNITY?

            The re-election of Barack Obama will be a disaster for the United States.  Though I opposed many of his polices, I shall discuss only one here.  Yet, 1) this is an important topic for all Americans; and 2) it is an issue that saddens me personally on an emotional level.

(1) The Political

            In the fall of 2012 the United States Supreme Court took up, once again, the issue of racial preferences and affirmative action.  There is little doubt that the Left of the Court, Bader-Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan will vote to continue affirmative action.  Two have already done so in the Michigan cases of 2003, and Sotomayor and Kagan have made clear their support for the policy.  On the Right, Thomas and Scalia voted against the policy in 2003, and Alito will probably join them.  Roberts was assumed to be in the Right camp, but after his decision this fall upholding Obama Care as a tax, one cannot be sure of his vote.  Most commentators thought Justice Kennedy was undecided on this issue.  So, on the affirmative action issue the line-up is 4 for, 3 against, 2 undecided.

            Had the Republican ticket of Romney-Ryan won the Presidency in November 2012, it MIGHT have sent a message to the US Supreme Court.  I am aware that the Supreme Court is supposed to be above the fray of mere election campaigns, but someone long ago asserted that the Supreme Court follows the election returns.  A Romney victory might have been followed by a 5-4 high court decision disallowing racial preferences.  Romney, like most wealthy Republicans, would attempt to side-step the issue (as he did in the campaign).  But as one more willing to follow the law, his administration might have begun the machinery to dismantle the massive affirmative action bureaucracy.  It is a large, ideologically committed bureaucracy, which would obstruct any attempt to prevent it using racial quotas, preferences, and privileges.  (For an example of their destructive tactics, recall how Mary Frances Berry refused to yield the chair of the Civil Rights Commission when her term ended and an opponent of affirmative action had been appointed to replace her.)  The politically correct bureaucrats would scream that ending affirmative action is racist; they would be interviewed daily on main-stream media, with protest marches on every campus (mainly by the unqualified students who do not belong there in the first place, and who are there only because of affirmative action).  Dismantling the institutionalized discrimination called affirmative action would be difficult, but, with the Supreme Court and possibly the President and Congress behind the move, America could begin to use merit, testing, ability examinations, even IQ tests to admit students award scholarships, hire, promote, and give small business loans – rather than racial quotas as is the case under affirmative action.

            That was the OPPORTUNITY that would occur with a Romney win.  He lost.

            Now, what happens with the Supreme Court?  It is now less now likely that the Court will gather 5 votes to end race preferences and affirmative action.  The Court is not blind to the election.  So the vote on affirmative action will probably be 5-4 in favor of continuing race preferences.  However, suppose the Court ignores the 50% of Americans who re-elected Obama and decides instead to end affirmative action, by a slim 5-4 decision?  Who would enforce the ruling?  Obama is an affirmative action President.  Michelle Obama as a student was writing in favor of the a-a system that gave her privileges.  Professor Barack Obama openly supported affirmative action and preferences for Blacks and other racial groups.  Obama’s Attorney General Holder even sued schools that suspended Blacks at a higher rate than whites (there should be racial quotas for suspending students, according to the Obama Administration.  It fails to note that the unruly students who are so bad they need to be suspended may not fit into the Dept. of Justice’s racial quota categories.)  So even if the Supreme Court decided that all American citizens deserved equal opportunity, even if it decided to abolish a-a racial preferences, Obama would first denounce the decision and the Court, and then he would refuse to implement it.

            Of course, on this issue Obama is a total hypocrite.  And liar.  In numerous speeches in 2012, in his State of the Union speech, in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in summer 2012, in at least one of the debates with Romney, and in various campaign speeches, he has used the phrase, “We (the Democrats) favor the system in which we all play by the same rules.”  He lies.  Affirmative action MEANS we do NOT play by the same rules.  Whites play by one set (and receive negative action), Blacks by another (and receive affirmative action), Hispanics by another, Amerindians, etc.  Unfortunately, Romney and the Republicans never called Obama on his lie and his hypocrisy.

            That Obama includes that phrase in his speeches indicates that most Americans still believe in the ideal that all should play by the same rules.  But Obama lies to the people.  Obama would do everything to prevent us from playing by the same rules.  He will do everything to prevent a system that requires equal opportunity for all citizens, including whites.

            Elsewhere I have pointed out that the result of affirmative action is that one hires NOT the best qualified, but the quota person.  It is prescription for decline.  And America has been in decline since this system was instituted under Republican President Richard Nixon.

            A Romney victory might have given this nation a chance to turn things around – to hire the best qualified, no matter their race; to admit to university the best qualified, no matter their race; to award the scholarship to the best qualified, no matter their race, etc.  Romney’s defeat probably means a lost chance to make America the best by hiring the best.  Romney’s defeat probably means a lost chance to have all American citizens play by the same rules.  Romney’s defeat probably means a lost chance to end the legally required institutionalized racism of affirmative action.  Romney’s defeat is a lost chance.  Is it the last chance?

(2) The Personal

            I am a native of the South; I was born and grew up in what was then the largest city of the South, New Orleans.  I opposed the legally required institutional racism called segregation.  As a young man I participated in the first lunch counter sit-in in New Orleans.  I was arrested with six others.  My parents, who did not agree with me, began to receive terrible phone calls at all hours day and night.  There were threats to blow up their residence.  My father had to borrow a gun and bullets.   My relatives and many friends were unable to understand my motives.  How could I do such a terrible thing?  My defense, equal opportunity – that it was right that everyone have equal opportunity, that we all play by the same rules.  The slogan of the era was simple, “We should treat all without regard to race, color, or creed.”  Therefore, segregation was wrong.  We simply wanted equal rights for all.  The segregationists responded, that that is not what will happen.  They responded that the Blacks would soon have more rights than the whites; that segregation was needed to prevent crime against whites and keep things fair.  I disagreed.

            It seemed as if I won the argument.  In 1963 at the March on Washington, Martin Luther King declared in his “Dream” speech that he awaited the day when all would be judged by the content of their character and NOT by the color of their skin.  In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed to guarantee equal opportunity, with no hiring on preferences and no hiring for racial balance and quotas were illegal.  (I have detailed the debates and contests of the Civil Rights Act elsewhere).  There was a period of victory.  No more segregation!  No more race preferences!  America would be a land of equal opportunity, and even the bureaucracy established to enforce the new law was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  Unfortunately, the victory was pyrrhic.

            There were ominous signs, even early on.  These were the type where one feels uneasy, but remains quiet, for the good of the cause.  For example, on the day I was arrested with six others in the first New Orleans sit in, at Woolworths on Canal Street, we were taken first to the Rampart Street station, then to the main Parish lock-up, and then back to Rampart Street.    Bail was posted for us, and we were out by about 10 pm.  Because of the transfers, we were not fed; and none of us had eaten all day.  Archie, a Black who had been one of us arrested, Carlos, an Hispanic who was a member of our CORE group but who was an observer that day, and myself then went to a Black restaurant that night.  The waiter came to our table and announced, “I can serve you (to Archie), but not you two.”  Then he looked again at Carlos, “Well, I’ll serve you also, but not him (me).”  I was stunned.  Should we have a 2^nd sit-in on the same day?  Should two of us arrested at Woolworths now be arrested for not being served at a Black restaurant?  We were all in shock.  Neither Archie nor I wanted to return to jail, so we all left – the night of the first sit-in a Woolworths in New Orleans.

            In the 1970s I submitted a chapter of my autobiography about my experience in segregated New Orleans during the 1950s and culminating with the events at Woolworths AND the Black restaurant.  I was pleased when the J. of Ethnic Studies published most of it, but somehow the last part, about the Black restaurant refusing us service for food, was deleted.  Reality that was not politically correct, was usually censored by the individual; but if not, by the media, the academic community, the politicians.

            I was quite active in New Orleans CORE during its first year of existence, summer 1960-1961.  I was one of the first members of the organization.  I attended the CORE training institute in Miami during the summer of 1960, at which some of our teachers were baseball legend Jackie Robinson (who was openly supporting Republican Nixon), and Martin Luther King (who was then quietly for John Kennedy).   Through that first year about half the CORE activists were white students, often Southerners.

            In 1962 I was no longer active in CORE, for I had to try to make a living as a convicted felon.  (It would take a few years before the NO cases would reach the Supreme Court.)  Some of my white Tulane friends were still in the group when I learned that all the whites were expelled from the local CORE chapter.  Interracial dating was the excuse, but this was the beginning of a purge of whites in all the CORE chapters round the nation and then the SNCC chapters too.  Other cities CORE groups would find other excuses, but the result was the same – the whites were kicked out.  This was Black Nationalism rising.  By 1966 “Black Power” was the slogan.  “We Shall Overcome” was smothered by the fires of “Burn, Baby Burn!”  Non-violence yielded to riots and massive crime rates.  SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee became the Student National Coordinating Committee.

            With ever rising rioting and crime rates, the Left blamed the police and “institutional racism.”  The Leftists in the EEOC subverted the law they were mandated to enforce.  Using stealth, bureaucratic regulations, and political pressures, they turned civil rights into preferential rights, equal opportunity to the denial of equal opportunity, a ban on quotas, to quotas by another name: goals and timetables, racial balance, diversity.  The Left thus created institutional anti-white racism.  Republican President Richard Nixon’s Labor Dept. promulgated regulations that made this national policy.  And so we have had the racial quotas and preferences of affirmative action since 1970.  America has been in decline since then.

            Affirmative action can do little more to harm me personally.  I am now in my 70s and rarely seek new employment.  When I hear liberals justify affirmative action, as I did last week on Wisconsin Public Radio, that whites are still economically above Blacks and Hispanics, I cringe.  I do not care if every CEO in this nation is a white male, that is no reason to discriminate against poor and middle class whites.

            I struggled for equal rights in New Orleans in the 1950s and 60s – and paid a price.  Worse, my relatives probably paid a higher price.  But by the 1970s poor and middle class whites have been denied equal opportunity, denied their chance to rise, denied their chance to contribute to the creativity and wealth of American society.  Admittedly, I had no high hopes for Romney on this issue, for he never called Obama’s lies about playing by the same rules.  Yet, I hoped a Republican victory might allow the Supreme Court to make an historic decision voiding affirmative action, and the beginnings of dismantling this institutional racism could begin.  With Obama’s victory, institutional anti-white racism will become ossify making it harder to overturn later.  It means more discrimination against better candidates; more hiring of the incompetents.  It means more decline.  And on the personal level, I must always wonder now, were my relatives right, after all? --------Hugh Murray