Combating Wildfires in the Western United States

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARRETT. Somewhere, Mr. Speaker, someone is watching what is going on in this Chamber. Even now, probably in a Nation of 320-plus million, many someones are watching, and most of them don't have a clue who I am, and that is okay. But the fact that most of them don't have a clue who the lady pictured to my left, your right, is, is not okay.

On April 23, 1951, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, at the R.R. Moton High School, a 16-year-old student named Barbara Rose Johns strode onto a stage and implored her peers at this all-African American high school to assert their God-given rights of equality.

I am honored today by the presence of Ms. Johns' sister, Joan Johns, in the gallery. She is tickled when she speaks to me, which tickles me, because I am tickled when I speak to her. I told her earlier today, Mr. Speaker, that I was in love with her sister. It is interesting, because she is sitting with my wife.

The reason that I say that is that I love America, and as a member of the State house, I had the honor of carrying legislation that made April 23 Barbara Johns Day in Virginia. The reason is that Barbara Johns' story is a story that every American should know.

Someone had the temerity to tell me, as I worked towards creating Barbara Johns Day, ``That is Black history.'' Mr. Speaker, it is not Black history or White history. It is American history. And America is not Black or White or brown. America is an idea.

So when the Founders drafted the preamble to the Constitution and called for us to form a more perfect Union, the presence of the word ``more'' implied a perpetual duty. And the revolution that cast off an oppressive government from across an ocean against Great Britain is one that I would argue was perpetual, and that another hero of mine named Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, certainly an imperfect man, who articulated near perfect ideas.

Fast-forward to April 23, 1951. Barbara Johns, with a clean and clear and bright mind, influenced by her teachers and her Uncle Vernon Johns, understood that rights are not given by government but by something bigger, and understood that the duty of a citizen and a free nation was to assert their God-given rights. So the idea of something as draconianly oppressive as separate but equal was intolerable.

That day, she implored her students to walk out of Moton High School and the tar paper shacks and the leaking roofs and to demand equality not of outcomes, but of opportunity, because that is what America is supposed to be--without regard to gender, without regard to race, without regard to faith.

Now, what that manifested itself in was a court case, Davis v. Prince Edward County. That court case was amalgamated into another case of which I hope that people have heard, Brown v. Board of Education. The difference between that case and every other case was that those were initiated by lawyers, and this case was initiated by a 16-year-old girl who understood that the promise of liberty was not just to one group or another, that the American Revolution was perpetual, and that God had given her rights just like everyone else to be asserted as a citizen in a free society.

The fact that people watching don't know who I am is fine by me, but the fact that our students don't understand that America is supposed to be not Black or White or brown, but an idea wherein all people are created equal with an opportunity to succeed based on their work and their merit, that is not okay.

As a result, Mr. Speaker, we filed H.R. 5561, the Barbara Johns Congressional Gold Medal Act. Her efforts, without lauding herself, without patting herself on the back--indeed, going forth from this date and living a humble life as a wife and a librarian, as she aspired to-- are the embodiment of the nameless faces of millions who sacrificed so that we can live in a country that seeks to employ an idea that is the greatest idea known to the history of free people.

The civil rights movement is not a Black history story. It is not a White history story. It is an American history story. We are not a Black nation or a White nation. We are a nation built on an idea, and our students and our posterity need to understand that what makes us great is that this right fought for by people like this lady isn't universal.

So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that if the President is watching, he will file a Presidential Medal of Freedom; I hope that if Members or staff are watching, they will sign on to the Barbara Johns Congressional Gold Medal Act; and I hope that if students are watching, they will go to school tomorrow and tell their peers this is a country where people stood up so that we all have a chance to be that which we dream to be, because that is who Barbara Rose Johns was, and it is an American history story worth telling. Wildfires

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