Remembering and honoring the March on Washington of August 28, 1963.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for yielding the time.

I rise today in support of H. Res. 352, a resolution remembering and honoring the march on Washington of August 28, 1963. Let me first thank the Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who have worked together in the best spirit of bipartisanship in order to bring this important resolution to the floor of the House in short order: the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), chairman; and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking member of the Committee on Government Reform; the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt), the majority whip; the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip; the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), Democratic leader; and the gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert).

I would also like to recognize from our staffs Howard Moon, Jerry Hart, Kyle Nevins, Seth Webb, Rob Cogorno, Tania Shand, Keith Ausbrook and Phil Barnett for their attention to this important resolution in working together to move it through committee and to the floor expeditiously.

Mr. Speaker, in the spring and the summer of 1963, 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the ``big six'' civil rights leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph and our esteemed colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), now a Member of Congress, convened to plan a peaceful mass protest against the racial and civil rights injustices that were widespread at that time. This historic event, the largest U.S. demonstration ever assembled to that point, featured Dr. King's famous and historic ``I Have a Dream'' speech, which challenged Americans to answer the call of the United States Constitution: I have a dream that one day this Nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: that all men are created equal. These words helped to spark and fuel the movement that transformed the state of race relations and civil rights in America forever.

How did it all begin? In response to the blatant discrimination that had become a constant hardship in the lives of African American workers, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood

of Sleeping Car Porters, was the first to call for a march on Washington back in 1941. Twenty-plus years later, the event was planned in direct response to the tragic events of the spring and summer of 1963 in which more than 20,000 U.S. citizens were arrested and detained while nonviolently protesting notable injustices, including police dogs attacking peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham, the tragic assassinations of civil rights activists, the lack of congressional support for President Kennedy's civil rights bill that aimed to end discrimination against African Americans in the workplace, voting booths and schools and all other public domains.

As a direct result of the march, Dr. King's historic speech and the movement, they spawned the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 came to fruition, effectively ending segregation and ensuring voting rights for all Americans.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, interstate commerce, all of these were expanded later as a result of the march to include protections for women against discrimination and for the disabled.

So we come together today, 40 years later, to celebrate freedom, to celebrate justice, to celebrate equality for all Americans for which this historic march was indeed a catalyst. Some call it an accident. Others call it fate. Some call it the human hand, some the hand of God. Which it is I will not argue, but something strange, something inexplicable, something mysterious, something almost miraculous happened on that day when Dr. King was able to stand before thousands and thousands and to articulate the aims and the aspirations of the masses, not just in these United States, but all across the world in their quest for freedom. Something happened and today we are grateful because we all are the beneficiaries of what happened that fateful day.

Yes, some call it an accident. Others fate, some the hand of God, others the hand of man. Which it is I will not argue, but I will say that on this day, this Congress, in the form of this resolution, has an opportunity to say thank you, thank you to Dr. King, thank you to James Farmer, to Whitney Young, to Roy Wilkins, to A. Philip Randolph, and to our good friend and colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) and all who participated in this monumental and historic event for blazing a trail of freedom and equal rights under the law that lives on today and hopefully will live on even better tomorrow.

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ``Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our Nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.''

Thank God, Mr. Speaker, for that call to conscience, to morality and to action for America and the world that we benefit from today. I urge my colleagues to stand with me in support of this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, the march on Washington, August 28, 1963 marks a cornerstone in American history and especially in African American history. It was a movement towards civil rights whose purpose was to embrace freedom and justice for all.

The civil rights movement has had a long and difficult journey from slavery to today. Part of this journey in history towards equal justice is highlighted with Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President of the United States. On January 1, 1863, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation document that declared many slaves to be free, but it did not end slavery. It took the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution to end slavery on December 18, 1865. It took the 14th amendment to establish Negroes as citizens of the United States on July 9, 1868, and the 15th amendment to allow blacks to vote in this country on February 3, 1870.

Our citizenship and privileges were always questioned and in most situations denied until the march on Washington led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was 39 years ago that Jim Crow laws were subjugating and denying blacks the right to vote in certain southern States, the imposition of poll taxes, segregation of schools, housing, bus and train transportation, restrooms and other public accommodations.

The march on Washington of 1963 was originally initiated by A. Philip Randolph, who was an activist and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He, 22 years earlier, had planned a march on Washington in 1941 with the purpose to focus the attention of the American public and the world that African Americans needed more jobs and equal protection under the law.

This march was extremely close to occurring until just before the day of it. Mr. Randolph met with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he agreed to issue an executive order declaring that ``there shall be no discrimination in employment of the race, creed color or national origin.''

Executive Order 8802 represented the United States Government's most stringent civil rights action since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

In return for this agreement with President Roosevelt, Mr. Randolph called off the protest march.

Mr. Randolph and his colleague, Bayard Rustin, met with labor and civil rights leaders to plan the march on Washington that included nine demands. I think it is important that we remember those.

One, passage of a meaningful civil rights legislation at this session of Congress with no filibustering.

Two, immediate elimination of all racial segregation in public schools throughout the Nation.

Three, a big program of public works to provide jobs for all the Nation's unemployed, including job training and a placement program.

Four, a Federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in hiring workmen, either public or private.

Five, $2 an hour minimum wage across the board Nationwide.

Six, withholding of Federal funds from programs in which discrimination exists.

Seven, enforcements of the 14th amendment, reducing congressional representation of States where citizens are disenfranchised.

Eight, a broadened Fair Labor Standards Act to include currently excluded employment areas.

Nine, authority for the Attorney General to substitute injunctive suits when any constitutional right is violated.

Mr. Speaker I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop), the sponsor of this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) who has been referred to as one of the ``big six'' in 1963, but he is even bigger in 2003.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), another person who was at that march and has been marching since.

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

Mr. Speaker, I know that the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), and the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson- Lee) had all intended to be here to make comments on this resolution. Unfortunately, they were not able to make it, but I wanted to make sure that their hopes and aspirations were entered into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) for an opportunity to work with her as we brought this resolution to the floor. As has been indicated, September of this year, as we look back 40 years ago to August on that great day, none of us who are around will ever forget that march. None of us who were alive can forget the vibrancy that there was in the air, the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations. It is a day to long remember as we continue to march, not one day but to continue to march until freedom, justice, and equality exist for all in this great Nation.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the leadership of the gentleman from Illinois and his counterpart on the other side of the aisle for her leadership in bringing forward this important resolution.

I want to recognize the leadership of two gentlemen from Georgia, of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop) who is the sponsor of this resolution for stepping forward with a resolution that belongs on the floor, and, of course, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) who has just spoken, who led a commemoration in Statuary Hall for the 40th anniversary of the march before recess, and who is the last remaining living leader of the civil rights march on Washington. He led us, who were then members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, as a very young, the younger leader then, and he continues in that role as one of America's preeminent civil rights leaders today.

I do not think this is an occasion for doing what people around the country have been doing all through August, were you there. Of course, we were there, and people really think about being there in a way they ask where were you when John F. Kennedy was killed. They remember where they were then or where were you on September 11. The march on Washington is like that for millions of Americans, where were you, and people like to say

I was there, and of course, people are very proud of having been there because it was the first civil rights march for equality in the history of the United States here in Washington.

I was there as a law student, a staff member of the march on Washington. Frankly, this is not a time for nostalgia. I think that grand occasions like this, when we commemorate a change-making event like a march on Washington, are occasions for taking stock, the distance traveled, the distance to go.

Nothing could have been more moving than the events around the 40th anniversary, our own commemoration, here in the House, the moment the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) will remember when he and Mrs. King and I unveiled that stone marker and saw for the first time the marker where Martin Luther King spoke before, now on the Lincoln Memorial. Three of Reverend King's four children were there, the very four children he spoke of in that speech on August 28, 1963.

This is an occasion, if one is a Member of the House of Representatives, for looking at how the world has changed since then and how the civil rights movement has changed our world. When the march was held, essentially African Americans had carried one demand, one single demand for the more than hundred years since the civil war. It was not a plethora of issues we had before us. It was one demand: Enact into law, country of mine, equality unto law. That is all.

After that march, that happened, the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Little did I know then that I would come to enforce a section of that Act, Title VII, as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 15 years later. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, perhaps the most important because it empowered African Americans to do what they had to do for themselves; and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Actually, much of the legislative agenda of black America has been accomplished if we think about actual laws that need to be written to say thou shalt not discriminate. We will have a hard time thinking about it. Most of our time will be spent on enforcement.

There is one I hope this House thinks about and that is a law that should be attached to the Transportation Bill outlawing racial profiling.

Mr. Speaker, that is the single example of overt discrimination left unattended in our laws. But while we had one challenge and I can tell Members that staff had no problem coming up with that idea at the March on Washington, today if I would ask what is the one demand of the civil rights movement, Members would say wait one moment, and then go down a whole list of demands because we can now come forward with those demands: economic parity; educational opportunities; the criminal justice system where a whole generation of young black men are being locked up for minor drug offenses, killing the black family in our community; health care.

We can move on to these challenges. We have 38 African American Members, and we can move on to these challenges because the civil rights movement moved us on, the overriding challenge of equality under law. There is much to be done even to that reality, equality under law; but the resolution we honor today, the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, should send us first into reflection about moving toward the completion of the job of laying aside our racial past and moving on into a period of full equality.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Georgia for introducing this important resolution that we are considering on the House floor today.

Over 40 years ago, hundreds of thousands of citizens marched together upon Washington D.C. demanding two things, jobs and freedom. From all corners of our great nation people of all races, ethnicities and all walks of life came to participate in a peaceful demonstration that would leave a lasting legacy upon our country.

The march on Washington--now forever known as just the march-- represented one of those watershed moments in American history that deserves to be remembered and commemorated by all of us.

Televised worldwide, the march brought to the world the continuing social and economic discrimination faced by African Americans, as well as the inspirational words of many leaders of the Civil Rights movement, like the great Martin Luther King Jr., and my dear friend and colleague, Congressman John Lewis.

Looking out upon the masses gathered around the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King's delivered his now immortalized ``I Have a Dream Speech'' which proved to be the focal point of the march that day.

Speaking of the impetus for the march, Dr. King said:

We have come here today to dramatize an appalling

condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to

cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the

magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of

Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which

every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed

the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on

this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are

concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,

America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come

back marked ``insufficient funds.'' But we refuse to believe

that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe

that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of

opportunity of this nation.

The disconnect between white America and people of color regarding the issues of social and economic freedom and opportunity that Dr. King spoke so eloquently about remains with us today, as does that same optimism and sense of urgency that pervaded his speech and the march that day.

To be sure, substantial progress has been made in the 40 years since the march took place. But clearly we have a very long way to go before we can truly say that the ideals of the march have been met, particularly when we talk about economic freedom and opportunity for African Americans, the poor and people of color.

This is most clearly reflected in the labor and employments statistics that are released every month. In virtually all categories, African Americans and Hispanics, have higher rates of unemployment than their counterparts.

And we must equally warn that racism still very much exists in this country today. Only now it is much more subtle and insidious than the discrimination we faced in the 60's or that which our parents before that. Discrimination is still about racial profiling by law- enforcement. It is still about environmental injustice, which has become entrenched in our society by the unequal distribution of federal, state, and local funds which could provide needed healthcare, education and housing services to minority communities. And sadly as evidenced by the recent 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court ruling, it is still about voting rights--only in this case the right to have our votes counted equally.

So I close today by reminding my colleagues that there is still much, much more to be done. Our march goes on, and will continue to go on until--in the words of Dr. King--we can say ``justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.''

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) for yielding the time.

I also, Mr. Speaker, want to thank my good friend and colleague from the State of Georgia (Mr. Bishop) for bringing this resolution to the floor. I think it is so fitting and appropriate to pause and take note of the march on Washington 40 years later.

250,000 Americans gathered on the Mall and listened to Martin Luther King, Jr. say, I have a dream, a dream today that is deeply rooted in the American dream. This speech, this march, created the climate to make our Nation a better place. We have come a great distance since that time.

Forty years ago, in much of the American South, racial segregation was alive and well. Blacks could not attend the same schools as whites. We could not eat at the same restaurants. We could see the signs that divide our Nation: White men, Colored men. White women, Colored women. White waiting, Colored waiting.

In the spring and summer of 1963, as the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop) said, people were being beaten, jailed and even killed for participating in nonviolent protest. Millions of Americans could not register to vote because of the color of their skin. In Birmingham, Alabama, the commissioner of police, Eugene Bull Connor, used attacks dogs and fire hoses on peaceful, nonviolent protestors. In the State of Mississippi, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated.

We had come to Washington to say to the President and Members of Congress that America must change. We had to do something to dramatize the sense of urgency. Mr. Speaker, I can never, and I will never, forget that day as I stood and looked out on the Mall and saw a sea of humanity. It was a feeling that America was going to change and change forever.

Back in 1963 we did not have a fax machine, a Web site, a cellular telephone. We did not even have a computer. We stood on the Constitution, on the Bill of Rights. We used our feet, and we put our bodies on the line. We live in a different country, in a much better country because of the march on Washington.

I say today, 40 years later, we must recall the passion and spirit of that march. We must recapture the spirit as a Nation and a people. We must make this spirit part of our thoughts, our action and our lives. If we do this, we can make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream come true. We can build what we call the Beloved Community, a true interracial community, a community at peace with itself.

All of us, 40 years later, black and white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American, must pull together for the common good. This was our mission then. This is our mission, and this is our calling now.

If we reach the Beloved Community, where we are one Nation, one people, one house and one family, we would come to the end of a march that our Nation started some 40 years ago.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, there was so much hope, there was so much optimism when we left Washington 40 years ago, but 18 days after the march on Washington some of that hope, some of that optimism was shattered. Forty years ago yesterday, September 15, 1963, was a terrible bombing of a church in Birmingham where four little girls were killed while attending Sunday school on Sunday morning.

We did not give up. We did not give in. We did not give out. We did not become bitter. We did not get lost in a sea of despair. We kept fighting, we kept pushing, and we kept pulling to make our democracy better, to open up our democracy and let all of our people come in.

I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.