Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much. Let me commend the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus for the outstanding job that he has done in the short time that he has been in that position. I think that we will reach all kinds of heights with his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, as we commemorate Black History Month this year, there is a sober and anxious mood in our Nation. Our communities are worried about the uncertain state of the economy, the loss of jobs, the growing budget deficit, the budget cuts, which threaten to eliminate vital services for our children, students and for our senior citizens.

We are going to work diligently in the months ahead to address these pressing concerns and to try to prevent the gains that African Americans have made from being reversed.

We have all been touched by the recent tragedy which took the lives of seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. They represented the best of our Nation and our world: courage, diversity, optimism, and the pursuit of scientific knowledge for the betterment of humanity.

Among the crew were a young woman from India who immigrated to the United States of America to follow her dream, and with the Columbia mission she became the only Indian woman to travel into space; an Israeli man whom his country loved, the first Israeli astronaut, a symbol of national pride for Israel; and an African American astronaut from New York who was formerly a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, Michael Anderson.

He was an outstanding student of physics and astronomy who was selected by NASA in 1998 to make his first flight, which was aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. It traveled 3.6 million miles in space during 138 orbits around this world to reach the Mir Space Station.

In 1998, there is a picture on my wall that I took with Michael Anderson when he came to my Washington office to discuss how he could try to get more African American boys and girls involved in the space program, in physics, in mathematics, and he was talking about promoting more interest in NASA.

In fact, there was another African American astronaut whose name was Robert E. McNair, who was one of the seven crew members killed on the Challenger that exploded 73 seconds after its launch on January 28, 1986. On this mission he was supposed to carry out extensive studies on Halley's Comet.

Another African astronaut, Frederick D. Gregory, served as the commander of the Space Shuttle Discovery, which also performed important missions for NASA.

The first African American woman to join the space program, Dr. Mae Jemison, traveled aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. Dr. Jemison is a chemical engineer, a scientist, physician and astronaut, who worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, a medical officer in Sierra Leon and Liberia in West Africa.

Looking back in history this month, we pause to remember the men and women who laid the groundwork, often at great personal risk, for the benefit of future generations.

We are reminded that African Americans have achieved greatness in many fields: law, medicine, physics, the military, education, journalism, music, theater and literary arts.

But we must remember outstanding men like Ralph Bunche, the United Nations Undersecretary who became the first African American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

We honor the memory of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to become an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court with the great May 17, 1954 case that he argued.

While we are speaking of firsts, let us congratulate our colleague, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), who made history last month by becoming the first African American woman to earn a seat on the prestigious House Committee on Ways and Means.

We also pause to continue the debt of gratitude we owe to strong women of the past, like Sojourner Truth, the abolitionist and orator who risked her life, and Harriet Tubman, who helped conduct the Underground Railroad.

As a former teacher, I am committed to passing along stories of African American heroes to our children and grandchildren, so that they may dream of achieving great things in their lives.

I am proud of the fact that my brother, William Payne, who serves in the New Jersey State Assembly, authored a bill which was signed into law which the Governor of New Jersey, which establishes the New Jersey Amistad Commission to develop teacher-training programs to promote educational and awareness projects regarding the things that African Americans have done and their descendants, and the African Americans' contribution to the development of this country.

The commission will work to promote a more comprehensive study of African American history by revising the history books of New Jersey and promoting more extensive classroom discussion. The Amistad Commission is named after the enslaved crew of the ship Amistad, who organized an uprising in 1939 to gain their freedom. The crew had their case successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court.

As I conclude today, as our Nation awaits and watches the possibility of war which continues to loom, Black History Month is a good time to reflect that many African Americans have given service to our country.

African Americans fought in every major battle of the Revolutionary War: Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Trenton, Long Island, Valley Forge, and Yorktown. Crispus Attucks, an African American, on March 5, 1770, was the first person to give blood at Boston Commons where he was brought down by the British when he protested taxation without representation.

It was a black Minuteman, Peter Salem, at the battle of Bunker Hill, when they said don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes, who brought down Major Pitcairn, who led the British military.

In the Civil War we had many top African Americans. In 1862, the First Kansas Colored Volunteers won one of the first battles at Island Mound, Missouri. There were 168,000 black combat troops in addition to 200,000 members of service units in the War Between the States.

One out of four Union Navy personnel was black. The black calvary, with the Buffalo Soldiers, showed their importance at the Battle of San Juan Hill, where they prevented the Rough Riders, Teddy Roosevelt, from being annihilated at San Juan Hill. It was the Buffalo Soldiers that saved him, but we heard very little about them. As a matter of fact, they had a lower desertion and alcoholism rate than any other calvary people in our history.

Concluding, W.E.B. DuBois in World War I said, in spite of the problems, ``first your country, then your rights,'' and urged African Americans to go to war.

The 369th Regiment from Harlem spent 181 days in the trenches, a half a year, without relief. This is history that no one knows about. And no one ever spent 181 days in the trenches. Yet a person who lived a block from me, Mr. Needham Roberts, along with Private Henry Johnson, captured 30 Germans and held them for weeks, and people still do not know how they were able to keep this large number of Germans at bay.

My Uncle John Garrett was in the invasion of Normandy. When that was over, D-Day, they allowed the white troops to march through the Arch of Triumph; but the black troops were brought up a day later, and they were unable to march through the Arch of Triumph.

President Eisenhower, then general of the Army, wrote a letter to every combatant on D-Day, except African Americans. My uncle did not get a letter. But my Uncle John Garrett, we brought that to the attention of President Clinton, and all of the surviving D-Day African American veterans who we could find, and we worked with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) and his Committee on Veterans Affairs that he was working on, we found many African Americans, and President Clinton sent the letter that chief of our Army, Eisenhower, at the time refused, only because they were black.