An Hour of Power

Floor Speech

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio, Representative Beatty, my good friend, for those very kind words and, of course, for her tremendous leadership in anchoring and shepherding us here this evening in the same manner that she has done since her arrival here in the House of Representatives, always eloquent, erudite, and effervescent.

We appreciate that unique and tremendous combination of skill and ability that you bring to the people that you represent so ably in Columbus, Ohio, and, of course, really, on behalf of America as you stand here anchoring this Congressional Black Caucus Special Orders hour.

I look forward to continuing to work together throughout the year as we endeavor to speak truth to power here on the floor of the House of Representatives and articulate issues of significance and importance to African Americans in the United States of America and to all of America.

Earlier today I made the observation that this is the first day of Black History Month. Essentially, black history is American history. The two are forever intertwined. That is why the subject matter of this special order is of particular importance.

Dr. King once made the observation that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

I think what Dr. King was saying is that in this world you have got some good folks and you have got some bad actors. But in order for justice to prevail, what you essentially need is a fair amount of the good folks to come together, sacrifice, work hard, and dedicate themselves to the cause of social change, and at the end of the day justice will prevail.

Make no mistake that in the United States of America, of course, it has been a long and complicated march. We certainly have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. During the founding of the Republic back in 1776, in the DNA of this great country was embedded the principles of liberty and justice for all. It was a great document and a great start. Embedded in the DNA of this country was fairness, equality, and opportunity for everyone. But there was a genetic defect called chattel slavery that was also attendant to our birth.

If you are going to have any discussion about where we are in America today, you have got to recognize there was a genetic defect that has impacted the arc of the African American community here in America and the American story, and that genetic defect of chattel slavery stayed with us, of course, until the war ended in 1865. Millions of African American slaves were subjugated. It was one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated in the history of humanity. It finally ended in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment. Of course, we know that the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment followed, equal protection under the law for everyone, 14th Amendment, and the 15th Amendment was designed to guarantee the right to vote. The so-called Reconstruction period lasted until the middle of the 1870s, but it was largely abandoned thereafter.

The African Americans, of course, were given a raw, bad deal. How can you cure the genetic defect of chattel slavery with three constitutional amendments without ever really forcefully implementing them and within a decade or so abandoning the principles inherent in those constitutional amendments? In place we received the Black Codes, Jim Crow, segregation, and an intense lynching campaign unleashed on African Americans in the South, in the Midwest, in the far West, and other parts of the United States of America. So we went from chattel slavery, a brief period of Reconstruction, then you give us Jim Crow.

So we dealt with Jim Crow which was at least in principle abolished on paper when the Supreme Court makes the decision in Brown v. Board of Education that separate but equal was just a farce. It was a joke. It wasn't real. So the Supreme Court exposes that, but then says, go ahead and implement it with all deliberate speed. Which basically meant don't really implement it with any urgency, any immediacy, any impactful fashion, just take your time and do it at your own pace.

So as we are trying to deal with Jim Crow, then you have, of course, Dr. King and leaders of the civil rights movement, John Lewis, whom Congresswoman Beatty and I are so privileged to serve with, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, and so many others. The civil rights movement deals with the lingering effects of our original genetic defect of chattel slavery replaced by Jim Crow.

Then in the 1960s, we get the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1968 Fair Housing Act, Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, and efforts to try to finally correct the injustices that have been race based here in America. Like Reconstruction, which lasted for a little over a decade, we get this period of dramatic social change, mainly in the early and mid-1960s that is quickly abandoned and taken advantage of by Richard Nixon in 1968 with the Southern strategy White backlash, particularly in the Deep South, compounded in 1971 when President Richard Nixon makes the statement that drug abuse is public enemy number one. Essentially, the War on Drugs ushered in an era of mass incarceration.

When President Nixon made that statement, there were less than 350,000 people incarcerated in America. Today, 40-plus years later, after the War on Drugs, so called, was started, 2.3 million people, more than 1 million African American men, disproportionately and adversely impacting communities of color and as has been mentioned earlier, incarcerate more people in America than any other country in the world, a country where we over-incarcerate and under educate.

We have made a lot of progress in America. African Americans as a collective community really haven't been given any room to breathe because we have gone from chattel slavery--the original birth defect in this great Republic--to Jim Crow, to mass incarceration with brief periods of Reconstruction and civil rights era mixed in between. And you wonder why we are in the situation that we are in right now.

We have made a lot of progress. Obviously the fact that Barack Obama is sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a significant development, but as Dr. King says, he talked about an arc, which means that similar to what Abraham Lincoln once said, that we have to continue a march toward a more perfect Union, the Congressional Black Caucus with leadership from dynamic representatives like Joyce Beatty, have put forth a series of things to benefit not just the African American community, but all communities, to help bring the promise of American democracy to life.

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Mr. JEFFRIES. It is a great question. Unfortunately sort of the arc of history here in this great country of ours is that whenever progress has been made it has been followed by a backlash. Progress was made with the Reconstruction amendments. It was followed by a backlash that gave us Jim Crow, the Black Codes, and an explosion of lynching in the South. Progress, of course, was made in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act immediately followed by Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, and a backlash against things like affirmative action which had barely been put into motion and a rollback of the War on Poverty which was designed to help African Americans and all Americans of every race.

Then, of course, many thought that we perhaps had reached a post- racial America in the aftermath of the election of President Barack Obama, but we know, of course, that that is not the case sadly.

I am hopeful, however, that many of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Progressives who have come together, folks like Raul Labrador, Trey Gowdy, and Jason Chaffetz--good friends of mine on the other side of the aisle--recognize the importance of dealing with mass incarceration for America.

Here are a few statistics that I think we need to be concerned about as it relates to your question. African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a nonviolent drug offense, approximately 58 months, as White Americans do for a violent criminal offense, 62 months. Whites in America statistically use drugs five times as often as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of White Americans.

Lastly, African Americans represent 83 percent of crack cocaine Federal defendants, but only 28 percent of users--83 percent are defendants, 28 percent are users; whereas, White Americans represent 5.8 percent of Federal defendants but 62 percent of users.

Something is wrong. Justice is not colorblind in America. So hopefully we will find the ability to come together to deal with the overall broken criminal justice system and certainly as part of that rectify some of the racial disparities that exist.

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