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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, even though the gentleman from Pennsylvania's football team, the Eagles, beat the Vikings pretty badly, I forgive him for that because at least they beat New England and Tom Brady.

Now, on to the serious business.

I thank the gentleman, Mr. Evans, for hosting this Special Order talking about the Kerner Commission.

I was born and raised in the city of Detroit. I am honored to represent Minnesota. I am a Minnesotan and very proud of Minnesota, but I started life out in the city of Detroit.

I remember 1968. I was born in August of 1963. I distinctly remember the riots. As a small child, my father was a medical professional, and I remember him being gone for long hours, coming home extremely tired. I remember the earnest conversations my parents were having, talking about the riots.

I remember looking outside my door and seeing military-style vehicles driving by, which is something we didn't really see. I remember being afraid because we heard some noises, and my mother had me and my brothers get under the bed.

I had no idea, really, what was going on, but those memories for me are very vivid because, when you are a child and your parents are afraid, you can feel it. I don't think I will ever forget it.

As I got older, I wanted to know more about the causes of the riots, and I learned and read about the Kerner Commission. The Kerner Commission's report was designed to focus on all of the civil disturbances that had been happening in the United States, including the Detroit riot, which I was alive and have some memory of.

I think it is difficult for young people who want to understand the Kerner Commission report--a report that was prophetic, a report that was thorough and important, a report that was actually a pretty good piece of literature that had good recommendations that our country has never really taken seriously.

But to understand this report and to really delve into the roots of it, I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, to understand that, before 1968, before there ever was a Kerner Commission report, our country, the United States, was a slave-holding nation for about 250 years. If you mark African-American presence in the United States from 1619 and you say slavery officially ended in 1865, America, our country, the United States, was a slave-holding nation longer than it was not one-- longer, actually longer. This country held men, women, and children in bondage in absolute absence of freedom for longer than it has not, which is particularly ironic, given that our country is dedicated to liberty and freedom.

Literally millions of Americans existed in a state of anti-freedom, which is slavery. We have yet to contemplate it.

I remember going to law school studying property and contracts. We never talked about America's greatest amount of property, which is human property. We never actually asked: What is the law about leasing on slaves? What is the law about property ownership on slaves? What is this species of property?

We talked about real estate. We talked about other forms of property. We talked about intellectual property. But for many years of this Nation's history, the predominant form of property was human property in the United States, and we never stopped to even slow down.

I bet you there is not more than two or three law schools in the United States that take on this topic so that people can really understand the ground upon which we stand. We are in the U.S. Capitol, built by people who were not free. In this cathedral of freedom, the people who built it were not free for 250 years.

People stand by and say: Why don't you all get over that? You are always talking about that.

I say: Well, you all still celebrate the Fourth of July.

We are all proud on the Fourth of July that happened in 1776, but we are not supposed to talk about an institution that prevailed in the United States for most of its history.

And it wasn't quite over in 1865, was it?

No. In 1865, we passed the 13th Amendment banning involuntary servitude. We passed the 14th Amendment granting citizenship in, I think, 1868. In 1870, we passed the 15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote.

This is essentially war measures. I am glad they exist, trust me. I am quite grateful they exist. But when you consider that over 200,000 Black soldiers took up arms to keep the Union--the Union--it was the very least that could happen that Black men would get to vote. Black women didn't get to vote.

But then after that, it is important, Mr. Speaker, to bear in mind another phenomenon took place. By 1877, the Tilden-Hayes compromise was effected, in which there was a dead heat political election. And the Republicans of that day, who, ironically, were the people who were against slavery at that time and against racism and bigotry, they said: We are tired of fighting about racism, slavery, and what is to happen with the Freedman. We will pull Union troops out of the South if you Democrats give us the election.

That allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to become President. Samuel Tilden did not become the President, but the Southerners, Democrats at that time, got what they wanted.

This phenomenon that occurred after that was the end of reconstruction. Lynching, slavery by another name, and true terrorism, under the auspices of the Ku Klux Klan, reined in America at this time. Pulaski, Tennessee, was the home of the Klan. But there were many other White supremacist groups that received the sanction of our government. In fact, one might even argue that the whole government of the State of Indiana at one time was dominated by the Klan.

People interested in this phenomena can study a very important piece of film and book called ``Slavery By Another Name,'' that talked about convict leasing. The 13th Amendment says that you cannot hold anybody in an involuntary servitude unless convicted of a crime.

That loophole allowed our country to use the criminal justice system to push Black men into it to take advantage of their labor through convict leasing. And even though the industry in Alabama of steelmaking really had not taken root during slavery, it did take root after slavery. The people who mined the iron ore and who worked in those mines were, essentially, in convict leasing.

Convict leasing prevailed in our country up until the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, cotton production dropped after the Civil War, but then went back up because of convict leasing because Black men and women were held in bondage through an unjust criminal justice system that forced them to work cotton up until mechanization made hand cotton picking not advantageous anymore. That, together with the sharecropping system, maintained that system.

We think about the Kerner Commission report, we think about the riots of 1968, 1965, and 1966, all of these things, Black rage exploding on the national scene, and people ask: What are they mad about?

Two hundred and fifty years of slavery and 100 years after Jim Crow after that might make you a little upset.

Black people never missed a war. African-American soldiers helped fight for the Union; African-American soldiers helped fight in Korea; the Spanish-American war. As a matter of fact, you can't name a military conflict that Black people didn't fight for this country and die for it. Yet, after the service, usually we came back to racism and discrimination.

There is a great movie out now called ``Mudbound'' about this very phenomena. If people want to learn more about this, they can look at this film ``Mudbound'' about a Black soldier who comes back, gets treated with human dignity in Europe, comes back to Mississippi, and then gets lynched.

This is our country. I am proud of my country and I love my country, but I am not blind to it.

The Kerner Commission tried to open our eyes and tell us what was really going on. One of the phenomenon--and I would like to just note this--is that one of the many ways that racism manifested itself is through residential segregation. Blacks were not allowed to live in certain areas, work in certain areas, and, in 1903, the great Woodrow Wilson kicked Black people out of Federal employment. His reason was that we carry disease. This is in the modern era. Black people were relegated to living in certain neighborhoods. And, actually, when it was found to be illegal to say Blacks can't live in this neighborhood by the Supreme Court, then that is when redlining took hold.

Residential segregation was so effective, Mr. Speaker, for 50 years, that we now in America today--and I am talking about 2018--if you survey White Americans and you ask them, Have you had a significant and meaningful conversation in the last 6 months, who are those people and who are the top seven, 91 percent of White Americans will say that they haven't had a meaningful conversation with a person of color.

Residential segregation is so bad that we don't talk to each other. The result is no empathy--no sympathy; no empathy; no sense of, gee, that is really too bad.

People say: Well, they don't work hard. That is the problem.

Well, wait a minute. How could it be that the people who worked for 250 years for free don't work hard? How could it be that people who don't have any power are some big threat to be feared in this Nation when all we have done is serve it and build it?

At the end of the day, the Kerner Commission tried to highlight discrimination against African Americans in education, housing, and employment; tried to help the Nation understand why some African Americans get enraged about incidents of official violence; why we don't condone, nor even do we agree, with riots.

We cannot act like we don't understand them. Of course we understand them. Many of us have chosen that we are going to try to reform our country and help it reach its promise through our electoral system, through organizing, and activism. We are going to try to make America a stronger and better place by working within the systems that exist.

I am proud that I am one of those people. But I often have to find myself trying to convince people who don't agree with me that there are answers within the system that I am right and they are not, because they come with arguments sometimes based on the history.

The bottom line is the Kerner Commission report, 50 years ago today, we have made progress. There is no doubt about it. We don't have Jim Crow anymore. But we have also seen stagnation.

There is a new report by the Eisenhower Foundation, which shows that since the late 1960s, income inequality and the wealth gap have actually gotten wider. While high school and college graduation rates have improved for the Black community since the Kerner Commission report--thank goodness, and this is an important advance, and we are grateful for it--these gains in access have not translated in economic vitality.

Black families have the highest student debt. Thirty-one percent of all Black families have college debt, compared to about 20 percent of White families. College debt is tough on families of any color, but African Americans, having a lower overall income and a much lower wealth, have to borrow more to seek out education, and that is limiting African-American opportunity.

More than 70 percent of White families own their own homes compared to less than half of Black and Hispanic families. Since 1968, White homeownership has steadily increased, but Black homeownership has not changed. In 1968, 41 percent of Black families owned their own home.

And what is the homeownership rate today?

Now it is 41.2.

Given what I shared with you earlier about residential segregation and about how Blacks and Whites and Latinos don't really interact nearly as much as they should, given the fact that we are all Americans, people may not understand why African-American economic progress has not been as swift as we might want it to be.

To that I say it is a matter of residential segregation and even current redlining. I recommend to people to read an important book called ``Evicted'' by Matthew Desmond, and also listen to a podcast called ``Reveal'' about redlining. This prospect of redlining is very important. ``Reveal'' looked at literally thousands and thousands of pieces of data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. They found that, in 61 metropolitan areas in the United States, there is substantial evidence of mortgage discrimination. That is African Americans, who got the same credit score, the same down payment as other people, who are denied loans.

Mr. Speaker, this even happens in neighborhoods where Black people are the majority.

People wonder: How is it that you have gentrification?

Well, the Black person with the downpayment and the 700 credit score gets told that they cannot have a loan; and the White person with the 500 or 600 credit score and a 3 percent downpayment gets told: Sure, have the loan.

It is happening every day.

Listen to the podcast ``Reveal.'' You will see a woman who went through this herself. It left her not only without a house, but she had to have her partner, who is White and Asian mix, be the one who took out the mortgage because they wouldn't give her one.

I am saying that our country is truly a great nation, but to get to its true greatness, it has got to confront racial discrimination. I am not talking about prejudice. I am talking about racism.

What is the difference?

Prejudice means I don't like you because of your color, your race, and it is a personal thing. It is just I don't like you.

What I am talking about by racism is systematic denial of opportunity without regard to personality.

They didn't turn that Black woman down in that ``Reveal'' podcast because they didn't like her. They don't know her. They know she is Black, and that is all they need to know to turn her down.

This is what we have to confront as a country.

And as I close, Congressman Evans, and as I get ready to take my seat, I just want to point out that, in 2016, White families had a median net worth of $171,000 compared to $17,000 for Blacks and $20,000 for Latinos. Sixty percent of White families reported having retirement savings, which is double the rate for Black and Hispanic families.

We have to understand what Martin Luther King tried to teach us, and that is: What difference does it make if you can sit at a lunch counter if you cannot afford a hamburger?

The Kerner Commission tried to signal to us the way forward. In 2018, we still have the opportunity to take the lessons of it and to build a truly beloved society, as Martin Luther King tried to teach us, but it cannot just be platitudes and pretty talk. It has got to be real commitment, real money, and real investment in opportunity for all.

At the end of the day, in the United States, we say, as we say the Pledge of Allegiance, ``liberty and justice for all.'' I say economic liberty and economic justice for all, and I say we will then see much more social inclusion, and we will live up to the recommendations of the Kerner Commission. We can't wait another 50 years.

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Mr. ELLISON. Right.

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I think another Kerner Commission report is definitely appropriate. It is right. It is good. But I will say that the Eisenhower Foundation did a report that showed that, since the late 1960s, income inequality and the wealth gap have widened.

I really believe that what we really need to do is say to ourselves, as a nation, that we are going to actually live out the true meaning of our creed. At the end of the day, the problem is not intellectual; the problem is a matter of will.

Actually, we have real challenges in our Nation today because, I happen to believe, we have a President who is less willing to move progress forward than even other Republicans who have been in office.

We live in a time, now, where we have seen the rollback of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We have seen the--right now, there is an attack on public employees in the Supreme Court. It feels like 1870.

You remember I was talking about the Civil War. Black soldiers entered the Civil War in 1863 after the Emancipation Proclamation; 200,000 fought in that Civil War. Black soldiers helped win the Civil War and maintained the Union. In fact, Lincoln himself said that, without Black soldiers, we might not have a Union.

We went through Reconstruction. Of course, Lincoln was killed in April of 1865, but by 1870, we began to roll back, we began to see the progress and the promise roll back.

It feels a little bit like that right now. It feels a little bit like that. But, you know, we are not going back to them bad old days. I want everyone to hear that African Americans, Latinos, women, the LGBT community, people of other religious groups, minority religions, we are not going to the back of the bus. It is just not going to happen.

Better to say, okay, instead of having one group in America be supreme over everyone, what if that group were simply equal to everyone?

Some people in our country seem to believe that having 43 Presidents who are White men, you get one that is Black, and now, all of a sudden, oh, my God, the world is coming to an end. No, it isn't. Everything is fine. Everyone is fine. It just means that what we wrote on paper is actually getting reflected a little bit more in reality.

I think we need to make a firm commitment to end housing discrimination, a firm commitment to let the people vote, a firm commitment to stop giving tax breaks to the richest people and give the working and middle class a chance to earn a decent level of pay.

I think we need a Republican caucus who will help work with us to stop the carnage of guns on these streets and to allow people who have come here as children not to be thrown out of the country summarily. That is what we really need. But I am not getting the sense that they want to help out, so I am thinking we need to get elections that will get some people, Republican or Democrat, to come out here and do some good things for the American people--and not just the wealthiest, most privileged people.

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