Cold War Medal Act

Mr. Speaker, in recognition of Black History Month, I rise today to introduce the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site Establishment Act of 2003, a bill directing the National Park Service (NPS) to take ownership, restore and manage the historic Shaw home of Carter G. Woodson, ``the father of Black History.'' The bill would authorize the NPS to ``preserve, protect and interpret for the benefit, education and inspiration of present and future generations,'' the home where Woodson lived from 1915 to 1950. This legislation also authorizes the NPS to rehabilitate adjacent properties on either side of the home to facilitate tourism. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), which Woodson founded, also would be housed on the site, as it was originally. My good friend Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) will be the sponsor of this legislation in the Senate.

Congress passed my bill, H.R. 3201, the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site Study Act, in 2000, to begin the process of making the property at 1538 Ninth Street, NW a national historic site within the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. A NPS study, as mandated by the legislation, is required before the NPS can take control of property. The study determined that the Woodson Home is suitable and feasible for designation as a unit of the park system following the transfer of title from its current owner, the ASALH. The bill I introduce today is necessary in order for the NPS to receive the appropriation for extensive renovation of the site.

I am particularly pleased by the proposed rehabilitation of the entire block that is linked to the legislation I introduce today to rehabilitate the Woodson home. The NPS would work with Shiloh Community Development Corporation, established by Shiloh Baptist Church, which owns almost all of the property on the block of the Woodson home. The Shiloh Corporation would convert the block of homes to senior independent living housing, maintaining the historic facade of the row houses.

As Black History Month comes to a close, we open a new chapter in the story of an educator who is most responsible for the annual recognition of the contributions of black Americans in the nation's history and culture. I have introduced this legislation to honor Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a distinguished black American and founder of the Association of Negro Life and History, by authorizing the NPS to maintain in perpetuity his home at 1538 Ninth Street, N.W., here in the District of Columbia, as a National Historic Site under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The significance of this home was recognized in 1976, when it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. I introduce this bill today to assure that the nation's pride and purpose in celebrating Black History Month are not marred by neglect of the home of the founder of the commemoration and of the study of black history itself.

Dr. Woodson was a distinguished American historian who established African-American history as a discipline and spent a lifetime uncovering the contributions of African-Americans to our nation's history. He founded and performed his work through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), which has since been renamed the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH). Among its enduring accomplishments, ASNLH, under Dr. Woodson's leadership, instituted Negro History Week in 1926, to be observed in February during the week of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Today, of course, Negro History Week, which was mostly celebrated in segregated schools, like my own here in the District when I was a child, and in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, has gained support and participation throughout the country among people of all backgrounds as Black History Month.

Dr. Woodson, the son of former slaves, earned a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1912, becoming only the second African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard after the great W.E.B. DuBois. Woodson's personal educational achievement was extraordinary in itself, especially for a man who had been denied access to public education in Canton, Virginia, where Woodson was born in 1875. As a result, Dr. Woodson did not begin his formal education until he was 20 years old, after he moved to Huntington, West Virginia, where he received his high school diploma two years later. He then entered Berea College in Kentucky, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1897. Woodson continued his education at the University of Chicago, where he earned his A.B. and M.A. degrees, and then he got his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

During much of Dr. Woodson's life, there was widespread ignorance and very little information concerning African-American life and history. With his extensive studies, Woodson almost single-handedly established African-American historiography. Dr. Woodson's research, literally uncovering black history, helped to educate the American public about the contributions of African-Americans to the nation's history and culture. Through painstaking scholarship and historical research, his work helped reduce the stereotypes captured in pervasively negative portrayals of black people that have marred our history as a nation, To remedy these stereotypes, Dr. Woodson in 1915 founded ASNLH. Through ASNLH, Dr. Woodson dedicated his life to educating the American public about the contributions of black Americans to the nation's history and culture. This work in bringing history to bear where prejudice and racism had held sway has played an indispensable role in reducing prejudice and making the need for civil rights remedies clear.

To assure publication, under Dr. Woodson's leadership, ASNLH in 1920 also founded the Associated Publishers, Inc. for the publication of research on African-American history. Dr. Woodson published his seminal work, The Negro in Our History (1922), and many others under Associated Publishers, and the publishing company provided an outlet for scholarly works by numerous other black scholars. ASNLH also circulated two periodicals: the Negro History Bulletin, designed for mass consumption, and the Journal of Negro History, which was primarily directed to the academic community.

Dr. Woodson directed ASNLH's operations out of his home at 1538 Ninth Street, NW., Washington, DC in the historic Shaw neighborhood. From there, he trained researchers and staff and managed the organization's budget and fundraising efforts, while at the same time pursuing his own extraordinary discoveries in African-American history. The three-story Victorian style house, built in 1890, served as the headquarters of ASNLH into the early 70's, well after Dr. Woodson's death in 1950. In 1976, the house was designated as a National Historic Landmark. However, it has been unoccupied since the early 80's, and today, it stands boarded up and sorely in need of renovation. The walls inside the house are crumbling, there is termite infestation, water seeps through the roof during heavy rainstorms, and the house also constitutes a fire hazard jeopardizing adjacent buildings. This house that is a priceless American treasure must not be lost.

Mr. Speaker, passage of the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site Establishment Act of 2003, represents a concrete way for the House to commemorate Black History Month, by preserving the home and legacy of its founder, Dr. Carter G. Woodson. I urge my colleagues to support this important measure.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work of the gentlewoman, and I appreciate her yielding me this time.

I also appreciate the efforts of the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Radanovich), and may I thank especially the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), as well as the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), ranking member, who worked very closely with me to get this bill to the floor and keep it on track. I appreciate very much the efforts throughout this process from the very beginning in my first bill to this bill, H.R. 1012.

Mr. Speaker, this bill directs the National Parks Service to take ownership, restore, and manage the historic Shaw home of Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History, as he is called. The bill would authorize the NPS to preserve, protect, and interpret

for the benefit of education and inspiration of present and future generations the home where Woodson lived from 1915 to 1950. This legislation also authorizes NPS to rehabilitate adjacent properties on either side of the home to facilitate tourism. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which Woodson founded, also would be housed on this site as it was originally.

Congress passed my previous bill, H.R. 3201, the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site Study Act, in 2000, to begin the process of making the property at 1538 9th Street Northwest a historic site within the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. An NPS study as mandated by the legislation is required before the NPS can take control of the property. The study determined that the Woodson home is suitable and feasible for designation as a unit of the parks system following the transfer of title from its current owner, the association. I am particularly pleased by the proposed rehabilitation of the entire block that has come about because of this legislation and independent of this legislation.

The NPS would work with the Shiloh Community Development Corporation established by Shiloh Baptist Church, which owns almost all the property on the block of the Woodson home. The Shiloh Corporation would convert the block of homes to senior independent living housing, maintaining the historic facade of the rural houses. So Congress is able to leverage much more out of this designation and take over of this property than might have been originally envisioned.

This legislation honors Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a distinguished black American and founder of the Association of Negro Life and History. The significance of his home was recognized in 1976 when it was designated as a nationally historic landmark. This bill will ensure that the Nation's pride and purpose in celebrating Black History Month is not marred by neglect of the home of the founder of the commemoration and the study of black history itself. Dr. Woodson was a distinguished American historian who established African American history as a discipline and spent a lifetime uncovering the contributions of African Americans to our Nation's history. He founded and performed his work through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which has since been renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life in History. Among its enduring accomplishments, the association under Dr. Woodson's leadership instituted Negro History Week in 1926 to observe in February the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Today, of course, Negro History Week, which was mostly celebrated in segregated schools like my own here in the District when I was a child and in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, has gained support and participation throughout the country among people of all backgrounds as Black History Month.

Dr. Woodson, the son of former slaves, earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, becoming only the second African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard after the great W.E.B. DuBois. Woodson's personal and educational achievements were extraordinary in themselves, especially for a man who had been denied access to public education in Canton, Virginia, where Woodson was born in 1875. As a result, Dr. Woodson did not begin his formal education until he was 20 years old, after he moved to Huntington, West Virginia, where he received his high school diploma 2 years later.

He then entered Berea College in Kentucky, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1897. Woodson continued his education at the University of Chicago, where he earned his A.B. and M.A. degrees, and then got his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

During much of Dr. Woodson's life, there was widespread ignorance and very little information concerning African American life and history. With his extensive studies, Woodson almost single-handedly established African American historiography. Dr. Woodson's research literally uncovered black history and helped to educate the American people about the contributions of African Americans to the Nation's history and culture.

Through painstaking scholarship and historical research, his work helped reduce the stereotypes captured in pervasively negative portrayals of black people that have marred our history as a Nation. To remedy these stereotypes, Dr. Woodson in 1915 founded the association. Through the association, Dr. Woodson dedicated his life to educating the American public about the contributions of black Americans to the Nation's history and culture. This work, in bringing history to bear where prejudice and racism had held sway, played an indispensable role in reducing prejudice and making the need for civil rights remedies clear.

Mr. Speaker, this extraordinary history includes starting his own press, because there were no publishers, even for his great historical works.

To assure publication, under Dr. Woodson's leadership, ASNLH in 1920 also founded the Associated Publishers, Inc. for the publication of research on African-American history. Dr. Woodson published his seminal work, The Negro in Our History (1922), and many others under Associated Publishers, and the publishing company provided an outlet for scholarly works by numerous other black scholars. ASNLH also circulated two periodicals: the Negro History Bulletin, designed for mass consumption, and the Journal of Negro History, which was primarily directed to the academic community.

Dr. Woodson directed ASNLH's operations out of his home at 1538 Ninth Street, NW., Washington, DC in the historic Shaw neighborhood. From there, he trained researchers and staff and managed the organization's budget and fundraising efforts, while at the same time pursuing his own extraordinary discoveries in African-American history. The three-story Victorian style house, built in 1890, served as the headquarters of ASALH into the early 70's, well after Dr. Woodson's death in 1950. In 1976, the house was designated as a National Historic Landmark. However, it has been unoccupied since the early 80's, and today, it stands boarded up and sorely in need of renovation. The walls inside the house are crumbling, there is termite infestation, water seeps through the roof during heavy rainstorms, and the house also constitutes a fire hazard jeopardizing adjacent buildings. This house that is a priceless American treasure must not be lost.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the full committee and the chairman of the subcommittee, as well as ranking members of both, for their indispensable help in moving this bill forward.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1012, the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site Establishment Act of 2003. I want to thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for introducing this legislation, and I want to thank the committee for bringing it to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, Carter G. Woodson wrote once that his father told him when he was growing up and his father could not read and write that learning to accept insult, to compromise on principle, to mislead your fellow man or to betray your people was to lose your soul.

Dr. Carter G. Woodson has long been one of my favorite heroes. I first learned of him as a pre-teen, studying African American history at a small church in the little town where I grew up in Arkansas, to be a academician, teacher, lecturer, author and founder of what we now observe as African American History Month.

Mr. Speaker, I took a class in college titled Negro History. One of the books we used, which was required reading and a textbook, was ``The Negro in our History,'' written by Dr. Carter G. Woodson.

Dr. Woodson is one of the most often-quoted authors that I have ever encountered. My good friend and mentor, noted journalist and lecturer, Lou Palmer, used to end many of his speeches and lectures by quoting Dr. Carter G. Woodson. Lou would often say that Dr. Carter G. Woodson, writing in his book ``The Miseducation of the Negro,'' said that ``if you control a man's mind, you don't have to worry about how he will act. If you control a man's mind, you don't have to tell him to go to the back of the bus or to the back door. If you control a man's mind, he will find his place and stay in it.''

Lou used to admonish us to never go to the back door and to never let mass

media or any other entity control our minds and to never let anyone relegate us to the back door. He would say that Dr. Woodson always wanted us to go through the front door, and, if it was locked, then we should get an ax or a hatchet and cut it down or kick it in.

He would also suggest to us that Dr. Carter G. Woodson did not want us to be content once we had gotten into wherever it was we were trying to go; that it was our duty and responsibility to reach back and help someone else to enter.

So it was his writings and establishment of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History out of which has grown first Negro History Week and now African American or Black History Month.

Just think, that Carter G. Woodson never went to high school until he was 20 years old, 20 years old, and then went on to get a doctorate degree from Harvard University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago, turning out books and articles all the time, and he too wanted to reach back and help others; and through the establishment of Black History Month now people all over the United States and all over the world know of some of the attributes and contributions that African Americans have made.

Mr. Speaker, this is a great opportunity for me to simply say thank you to my friend Lou Palmer for really exposing me to Dr. Carter G. Woodson, and for the Nation to say thank you, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, and for me to thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for introducing this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, Carter G. Woodson's professional accomplishments are impressive. In 1915, while a professor at Howard University here in Washington, DC, Dr. Woodson launched the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization that would come to represent his life's work--the documentation and dissemination of the history of African Americans.

Through Dr. Woodson's work, and the work of his organization, Negro History Week was established in 1926 and expanded to Black History Month in 1976. Based on his lifelong scholarship and leadership, Dr. Woodson well deserved his title as the ``Father of Black History.''

In addition to these professional accomplishments, however, Dr. Woodson's personal life was one of amazing accomplishment as well. Born in Virginia in 1875, the child of slaves, Dr. Woodson was unable to attend school as a child. However, after teaching himself to read and write, Dr. Woodson and his brother moved to Huntington, WV, in my congressional district, when Dr. Woodson was seventeen. It had been his hope to attend Douglass High School in Huntington full time, but he was instead forced to earn his living in the coalfields, attending school for only a few months at a time.

At age 20, however, Carter Woodson was able to attend Douglass year round and earned his degree in just 2 years. After a teaching stint in Fayette County, WV, Dr. Woodson returned to serve as principal of Douglass High.

I would note that today, while Douglass High School is not longer an active school, it plays a significant role in the community. The building, located on Bruce Street and Tenth Avenue, was placed on the Register of Historic Places in 1985. It now serves as a museum, houses the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation, as well as the Ebenezer Medical Outreach Center that serves the people of the Fairfield West Community.

After college in Kentucky, Carter Woodson went on to study at the University of Chicago, the Sobronne, and Harvard University, where he became only the second African American to receive a doctorate.

To go from being a student at Douglass High School, to serving as the school's principal in just a few years, is impressive enough. However, to overcome an early life of poverty and illiteracy to achieve the absolute pinnacle of academic achievement, by way of hard work in the coalfields of West Virginia, is a truly amazing and inspirational achievement.

I commend my friend, Eleanor Holmes Norton on her legislation to add Dr. Woodson's home here in Washington to our National Park System. It is my hope that, through the establishment of this new site, people from around the country, and even from around the world, might come to know the legacy of Dr. Carter G. Woodson and to draw inspiration from his life and work.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1012) to establish the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1012, introduced by the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to acquire the Carter G. Woodson Home in Washington, D.C., and once acquired, would establish the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site in the District of Columbia. This new historic site would foster opportunities for developing and promoting interpretation of African American cultural heritage throughout Washington, D.C.

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Carter Woodson, son of former slaves, earned a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1912, becoming only the second black American to receive a doctorate from Harvard after the great W.E.B. DuBois. After receiving the degree, Dr. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in his home. Dr. Woodson is seen by many as a person of national significance because of his early and determined work regarding African American history.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1012 also authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to enter into an agreement with the Shiloh Community Development Corporation for the purpose of rehabilitating the Woodson home and other property within the historic site, as well as with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, to allow the association to use a portion of the historic site for its own administrative purposes.

Mr. Speaker, a June, 2002 National Parks Service special resources study determined that the Woodson site is nationally significant, suitable and feasible for the designation as a unit of the national parks system. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1012.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.