Little Rock Central High School Desegregation 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act

LITTLE ROCK CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL DESEGREGATION 50TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE COIN ACT -- (House of Representatives - December 18, 2005)

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding time. I also want to commend the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) for introducing this legislation. I never miss an opportunity to comment on anything that was taking place in Arkansas at that time because at that time I was a young contemporary of the Little Rock Nine. As they went into high school, and some were seniors, I was a freshman in college a few miles away down at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Of course at that time it was Arkansas AM&N College. And I remember vividly Daisy Bates, the outstanding head of the NAACP, who actually grew up down in the little part of Arkansas, in rural Arkansas where I came from.

Wiley Branton was the outstanding attorney. They were our heroes. Of course, as the gentlewoman from New York has indicated, all of the Little Rock Nine have gone on to become outstanding citizens. I have had the good fortune to know some of them or members of their family. I did student teaching at the school where Mrs. Patillo taught, who was Melba Patillo's mother, and so I knew her at that time. Minnie Jean Brown and I spent a weekend together last year down at Southern Illinois University, where she was a speaker at the university where she graduated. And all of us have seen Ernie Green throughout the country, as he has become a distinguished civic and business leader. Of course Ernie was the Undersecretary of Labor during the Carter Administration.

So I simply come to urge support. Again, I commend Mr. Snyder, an outstanding Representative who represents all of the people in that great city and in that great area. And I urge its passage.

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