Recognizing the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the pioneering of college students whose determination and nonviolent resistance led to the desegregation of lunch counters and places of public accommodation over a 5-year period.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1566) recognizing the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the pioneering of college students whose determination and nonviolent resistance led to the desegregation of lunch counters and places of public accommodation over a 5-year period.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and add extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

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

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC, one of the organizations that served as the very foundation of the civil rights movement, the movement that brought America closer to its purpose, its established goals in the Declaration of Independence, which we had been striving to achieve and are still striving to achieve, as a place where there is equal opportunity for all people.

It was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was responsible for conceptualizing and implementing the sit-in movement. College students came together in the name of justice and equality to desegregate lunch counters and other public places through nonviolent demonstrations.

I recently read a copy of the Smithsonian magazine in which there was an article about the sit-in movement. There was an interview with Joseph McNeil, one of the four students from North Carolina A&T who participated in the sit-ins at Woolworth's department store in 1960. While studying engineering physics at North Carolina A&T, Mr. McNeil would take the bus from New York to North Carolina and personally experience the shift in his status as he went from north to south. As an African American, he saw the differences in America traveling those distances, differences that should not have been allowed.

He is quoted in the article saying, ``In Philadelphia, I could eat anywhere in the bus station. By Maryland, that had changed.'' And in the Greyhound depot in Richmond, Virginia, McNeil couldn't buy a hot dog at a food counter reserved for whites. He further explained, ``I was still the same person, but I was treated differently. To face this kind of experience and not challenge it meant we were part of the problem.''

Well, the problem was America, and America needed changing. SNCC was one of the groups that came forth to change America and see that Thomas Jefferson's words weren't just words on paper as they were established in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence, but the practice of America, and that all

men were created equal and had those inalienable rights.

In honor of those students' heroic efforts, I would like to make three observations regarding their actions and their implications.

First, these sit-ins and other forms of nonviolent protests changed the climate and character of our country forever. As a direct result of SNCC sit-ins, protests, and boycotts, cities around the country, the South in particular, began to integrate their businesses in 1960, and thereafter, paving the way for the entire country to do so.

SNCC's work was not limited to integration of places of public accommodation. SNCC worked with the NAACP to achieve the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation not only at places of public accommodation, but also in schools, in hiring, and in voting registration. Shortly thereafter, in the wake of these achievements, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Second, despite SNCC's plethora of victories, their work was not easy, uncontroversial, or even safe. Those dedicated students faced clubs, tear gas, and high-pressure fire hoses at peaceful marches. Many faced harassment and beatings from racial dissenters, and many were arrested and even jailed despite their nonviolence. Some lost their lives.

These challenges posed by opposition did not stop SNCC. They continued to march, sit in, boycott, and to raise awareness for equal treatment and opportunities regardless of race--all shown on television--raising America's consciousness in seeing that morality was the future of this country.

For example, in Louisiana, student protesters were expelled from schools and were barred from the State's public colleges and universities. After the State barred these students from receiving the education they deserved, their peers boycotted classes for years.

The sit-in movement spanned across many States, including my State of Tennessee. The Nashville sit-in movement led to its being the first major city to begin the desegregation of its public facilities on May 10 of 1960. In Memphis, students from Le Moyne College and Owen Junior College also organized sit-ins at the main public library and local department stores.

Lastly, as I reflect on these important changes of the students that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee brought about in our country to bring it closer to the democratic ideals on which it was founded, I cannot help but be reminded of how far our country still has to go to achieve the goals that were set out in the Declaration of Independence.

Glaring inequality still exists in education, housing, health, marriage, and other civil rights. America still has a distance to go.

It is critical that we look to the accomplishments of the SNCC as an inspiration to work harder for civil rights that have not yet been met and not as a pacifier to convince ourselves that we truly live up to the name ``free country.''

With that said, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the sit-in movement that it sparked, which really sparked the justice movement in our Nation, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman who is the hero of the civil rights movement, a person who personally experienced the times of which we are speaking, who is, I believe, one of the founders of SNCC and a gentleman with whom we are privileged to serve and to know in America, who helped make America the country it is today and who is helping to move it forward to be the country that it needs to be, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Houston, Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I yield the gentlewoman as much time as she needs.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to reflect on why we're here. Mr. Lewis and I brought this resolution because it's the 50th anniversary of SNCC.

There were other civil rights organizations as well, the NAACP, there was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, there was CORE, and there was SNCC. SNCC came about at a time when this country was ripe for change and helped really light the fire that ignited a Nation to see the injustices and bring about the change that came about in the sixties.

When you think about what's happened in 50 years, that we're here on the floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, honoring the founding of SNCC, an organization when it was founded and it was exercising its purposes, it was sneered and jeered and disdained by most people in America because they were upsetting America. They were bringing about change that people didn't understand and people resisted. And there were a lot of people that thought that the people involved in these organizations should be jailed, they were un- American, they were Communists, they were Socialists. That same rhetoric that you sometimes hear today you heard 50 years ago about these organizations that helped make America the more perfect Union it is, and to bring about the liberties that we really should enjoy, that Jefferson wrote about, but that were words on paper, not in practice.

The people that were involved with SNCC and these civil rights organizations should be considered heroes and are heroes because they made America. They made America what it should be, the land of opportunity and justice and equality and liberty, and giving all people rights, which we didn't have.

We had Jim Crow laws that were enforced by this Nation's laws, that Brown v. Board of Education changed. But before that, we had separate but equal, Plessy v. Ferguson, and it took

the work of Thurgood Marshall and others to overturn that in the courts, and later to overturn it in these Halls of this Congress in 1965 and 1964, civil rights laws, civil rights laws that, unfortunately, caused the Democrats to lose their majorities and to lose their hold on the South because they did what was right for this country, and what that flag stands for and what this Nation stands for.

So we're here today to honor the people and the organizations that at one time were sneered and disdained. But now we understand they were right. And sometimes you have to look back at history to understand who the heroes are and the direction this country goes in and where it should be.

And so I respect Mr. Lewis. He was in the front line. He mentioned being arrested 24 times. He was beaten; he was hit. He was in the face of injustice in the picture of law and order, and stood up to it with a moral law that was higher than the law of the State of Alabama, and he made that law change.

And so it's fitting, appropriate, and proper that we honor those heroes and the anniversary of that organization and that this United States Congress pass this resolution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my staff, Ms. Reisha Phills, who worked with me on this resolution with Mr. Lewis, and I yield back the balance of my time and ask that we pass this resolution here tonight.

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

I want to thank my colleague, my brother, and my friend, Mr. Cohen, for introducing this resolution with me. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia, along with Chairman Conyers and members of the Judiciary Committee, for bringing this resolution to the floor tonight.

Mr. Speaker, it is fitting and appropriate that we pause to recognize the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC. It grew

out of the sit-in movement and the efforts of hundreds and thousands of young people who were standing up by sitting in.

These young people put their bodies, their hearts, and their spirits on the line to end racial discrimination and segregation in public accommodations. We were working to liberate the soul of a nation. It was the young people--black and white, Jewish and Christian, from the North and the South--coming together as a circle of trust and a band of brothers and sisters to change America forever.

As a young student in the Nashville Student Movement, people like Jim Lawson taught us the philosophy and the discipline of nonviolent resistance. He taught us the way of love. While we trained and learned and prepared to sit in, the Greensboro sit-ins happened. That was the spark that ignited the courage and the passion of students around the Nation.

On the day of the first Nashville sit-in, 124 of us gathered at the First Baptist Church, and we walked through downtown Nashville, two by two, quiet and solemn, well-dressed and well-mannered. My group went to Woolworth's. We sat at the counter, and we were told that we wouldn't be served. The lunch counter was closed early, and they turned out the lights, but we sat there all day, quietly--some of us reading, some of us doing our homework. We sat in again and again that week. It was the first time that I was arrested for civil disobedience. No sooner would one group be arrested than another group would take our place at the lunch counters.

Some of us were beaten, and the images of violence were broadcast around the Nation. Soon, the jails were full. The process of desegregation had begun. For months, all around the country, students sat in and stood in. The sit-ins spread around the South like wildfire. We marched; we sang; we prayed. Along the way, many were beaten, jailed, and some even died in the struggle.

During that time, 126 student delegates from 58 sit-in centers and 12 different States came to the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. That was the first meeting of what would become known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC.

SNCC did the hard, nitty-gritty work of organizing and mobilizing people in the heart of the Deep South to attempt to register to vote. From the sit-ins to the Freedom Rides, from Freedom Summer voter registration drives to the March on Washington, SNCC was there.

By 1963, at 23 years old, I had been arrested 24 times. I had been on the Freedom Rides. That year, I also became the chairman of SNCC.

SNCC was made up of people like Bob Moses and Bob Zelner, Julian Bond and Charles Sherrod, Bernard Lafyette and Diane Nash, Ruby Doris Smith and Fannie Lou Hamer, Howard Zinn and Ella Baker.

These young people, the students, carried the movement into the heart of the Deep South, and America is a better place because of them and the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We hope that they will inspire the next generation to continue to build the beloved community. It is a society based on simple justice that values the dignity and the worth of every human being.

I ask and urge all of my colleagues to join us in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of SNCC and the sit-in movement.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my staff for working on this resolution, especially my legislative director, Michaeleen Crowell.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I support House Resolution 1566. This resolution recognizes and commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which is also known as SNCC, and the national sit-in movement in the 1960s.

The SNCC was a key contributor to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The nonviolent aims of the SNCC helped bring about desegregation, civil rights, and voting rights for all Americans.

The SNCC formed under the leadership of Ella Baker at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960. A conference was held for students to share experiences and to coordinate activities with regard to racial equality. As sit-ins occurred throughout the South, the SNCC grew into a large organization. By August of 1961, the movement had attracted more than 70,000 participants.

The SNCC's nonviolent sit-ins, boycotts, and protests helped bring about the desegregation of places of public accommodation. The SNCC was also one of the leaders of the Freedom Rides in 1961 and of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. SNCC Freedom Riders put themselves at great risk by traveling in racially integrated groups throughout the South. More than 400 people took part in these Freedom Rides throughout the spring and summer of 1961.

Robert Parris Moses helped transform the SNCC from a student protest group to a community-based political organization for the rural poor. He led a voter registration project in Mississippi in 1961 that became a springboard for similar SNCC activities from 1962 to 1966.

The SNCC's voter registration efforts culminated in 1964 with the Mississippi Summer Project, which was sponsored by the SNCC, by the Congress of Racial Equality, and by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Hundreds of black and white volunteers from the North and South participated in voter registration projects.

The SNCC also organized Freedom Schools for the purpose of eradicating fear and educating African Americans about their right to vote and to participate in the democratic process.

Finally, the SNCC worked with the NAACP to bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It is clear that the nonviolent sit-ins of the students who began the SNCC in 1960 inspired others later to take historic steps toward the building of racial equality in America, so I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution.

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

Thank you very much to the manager of this bill, and thank you for allowing me to rise to salute our colleague, Congressman John Lewis, and the list of honorees that he listed just a few minutes ago, part of the founding foundation of SNCC.

So many of us associated ourselves as we looked to this group of young people who were willing to leave the comfort of classrooms around America, college classrooms, and begin to stand alongside of those who might have been considered elders in the movement.

You know, there are many discussions about whether an entity or a group is a movement. We've heard that of late over the last couple of few years. But those of us who know the civil rights movement and know about SNCC, know about the SCLC, we really understand what a movement was and what it is.

Fifty years is appropriate to commemorate a group that sacrificed themselves in the name of peace and nonviolence. Remember now, they were young people, energized, active, dedicated young people, full of energy, and certainly tempted by the violence that was around them. But because of leaders like John Lewis, their president, they were able to truly create a movement. They provided the legs and the genius of the sit-in movement as they went around the places of the South.

You know, when you're young, you can sit for a long time. You have the tenacity to be able to withstand the back-bending sitting that it requires. You are able to draw upon your strength to not eat while you're sitting at the counter because they were denying you that right.

And so there was a special role, and I thank the gentleman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and they have a very special place in history.

I'm very grateful that this great leader and hero who is amongst us today, John Lewis of Georgia, was able to come to the floor, with the help of his great staff, to give us the opportunity to commemorate those who many may not know, but to realize that they truly were part of a movement. They had a cause, a belief, a passion, a determination and a commitment to the freedom of all people.

Thank you to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and thank you, John Lewis.