Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 198, a resolution recognizing the significance of Black History Month. I am an original cosponsor of this important legislation. Celebrated during the…
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 198, a resolution recognizing the significance of Black History Month. I am an original cosponsor of this important legislation.
Celebrated during the month of February, Black History Month allows all Americans to celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans, the famous and the not so famous, who have made strides in all walks of life.
I would like to share with you the words of one of the most noted African Americans in history--civil rights leader, Pan-African sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor poet, and scholar, W. E. B. Dubois, who said:
``The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.''
This is time to celebrate the trials, tribulations, accomplishments and contributions of African Americans, who have certainly created and attained so much in this nation's young history.
As many of my colleagues know, many of our ancestors were brought here in the grips of iron chains on slave ships. Despite this demoralizing beginning, African Americans created a noble culture that encompasses the American spirit of survival through adversity.
I would like to share a few stories of my past, of why it is so important that we continue to celebrate Black History Month and continue to reflect on our country's struggle with the equality of all people.
More than 60 years ago, my parents, Robert and Ruth Cummings, grew up in rural South Carolina--near a small Clarendon County town called Manning. Some here may recall that Clarendon County would later have the dubious distinction of having its segregated mis-education of Black children successfully overturned in one of the Supreme Court's five Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation cases: Briggs v. Elliot.
I will never forget the painful lesson that my father taught us children about our Grandfather's death in Clarendon County.
When my father was a child in South Carolina, his father was taken back to their home after collapsing in church.
Granddad lay close to death as two white doctors arrived to examine him--an older doctor and his younger assistant.
Later on that moonless night, they emerged from the house onto the front porch.
They did not notice that my father was sitting over in the corner, alone in the dark.
``We should take this man to the hospital in town,'' the younger doctor pleaded. ``It's not worth the effort,'' the older doctor replied. ``He's just a N-*-g-g-*-r.''
My grandfather died on that dark, South Carolina night. As a result, I never had a chance to meet the man whose blood flows through my veins.
I never sat on his knee. He never took me fishing. I never learned about the struggles and joys of this strong and good man.
This, I think, is why I became convinced at an early age that we all must work together to create an America in which no life is considered to be without value.
For Americans of Color, the implications of this personal tragedy are clear.
Unable to depend upon the larger society to value our humanity, African American families have learned that we must create our own doctors and nurses.
We founded first-rate medical schools like those at Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and Morehouse School of Medicine.
We have sent our children to study at world-class nursing schools like the ones in my District at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and Coppin State University.
And, in response, brilliant African American men and women have followed their calling to become our healers.
Some became famous--like Dr. Ben Carson at Johns Hopkins University.
Yet, despite all of these efforts, the American medical establishment has confirmed that ``unequal treatment'' all too often remains the rule, not the exception, in the medical care that Americans of color receive today.
In fact, African Americans receive inferior medical care--compared to the majority population--even when our incomes and insurance plans are the same. These disparities contribute to our higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and other life-endangering conditions.
Consider this: The December 2004 issue of the American Journal of Public Health contained important findings by a research team headed by President Clinton's Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, and Professor Stephen Woolfe of Virginia Commonwealth University.
The Satcher-Woolfe team examined data for the period of the Clinton years that they had gleaned from the National Center for Health Statistics.
During the 1990s, they found that more than 886,000 deaths could have been prevented if African Americans had received the same health care as White Americans.
My friends, when we consider our national health policy, we also are considering our national morality.
We must face the harsh truth: Being Black in America continues to be a medically dangerous condition. And being both Black and poor can be deadly.
But the crisis is spreading. Today more than 46 million Americans of every racial background are uninsured.
And, as a direct result, far too many Americans of every race and creed are dying before their time.
More often than not, health care issues are directly related to the broader challenge of providing access to economic opportunity.
Again, the story of my own parents illustrates this point.
My parents moved to South Baltimore in 1945.
They knew that they had to leave South Carolina if their children were to have a better life.
Life in Baltimore was difficult for my family. During my earliest years in South Baltimore, all that they could afford for themselves and their seven children was a small, rented, three-room house.
Yet, it was there in South Baltimore that my life was changed.
It happened at a neighborhood swimming pool, which at that time was segregated.
We were just children looking for a way to escape the summer heat of South Baltimore's concrete and asphalt streets.
In those days, South Baltimore's white children swam and relaxed in the Olympic-sized Riverside Pool that the City maintained not far from where I lived.
Black children were barred from Riverside by the cruelty of segregation.
We were consigned by the color of our skin to an aging wading pool at Sharp and Hamburg Streets. That wading pool was so small that we had to take turns to be able to sit in the cool water.
Upset about our exclusion from our neighborhood's public pool, we complained.
To their everlasting credit, Captain Jim Smith, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, and the NAACP organized a march.
Other people soon joined in this struggle.
I would like to be able to tell you that the White families at Riverside accepted us graciously. Sadly, that is not what happened.
As we tried to gain entrance to the pool each day for over a week, we were spit upon, threatened and called everything but children of God.
I still carry a scar that I received from a bottle thrown at me during the march. We were afraid. And our parents became concerned for our safety.
Then, when all seemed lost, we saw Juanita Jackson Mitchell marching up the street toward our little group. With her were two reluctant, but grimly determined, policemen. They seemed more afraid of Ms. Mitchell's anger than of the jeering, hostile crowd.
Four decades later, the history books say that the Riverside pool was peaceably integrated. We know the truth.
My friends, the struggle to integrate that public swimming pool at Riverside may not have been a large thing in the eyes of the world.
It was not Little Rock--not Selma, Birmingham nor St. Augustine.
But Riverside has a LARGE meaning for me.
At Riverside, I learned that there are dividing lines in every human lifelines that separate hatred from love.
And I learned that we all will face a time when we must choose on which side of these lines we will take a stand.
That choice is the same no matter who is the victim of prejudice, exclusion and hatred.
We face that same choice today as we open up America to people from every continent, language, religion and race.
And how we handle this choice will determine the future of generations yet unborn.
Black History Month means so much to so many people and I want to thank Congressman Al Green for his leadership in introducing H. Res.198 to recognize this fact. I strongly urge all my colleagues to support it.
