Fighting Voter Suppression
Floor Speech
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to co-anchor the CBC Special Order hour along with my distinguished colleague, the legend, James Clyburn.
For the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people on voting rights, specifically fighting voter suppression, an issue of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, the constituents we represent, and all Americans.
Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Constitution created a government by, of, and for We the People. As a child, I often reflected on exactly what that meant. What that means is that it is a government that reflects the perspective of and, therefore, meets the needs of the people who participate. However, for most of our country's history in the beginning, only White, landowning men could vote.
That was changed in 1870 when the 15th Amendment opened the door for Black men to vote by prohibiting the Federal Government and States from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote on the account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved and free Black men voted and got elected to office. When Reconstruction ended, though, the former Confederate States passed new constitutions, including such things as literacy tests, poll taxes, and felony disenfranchisement. In the words of E. Carter Glass in the Virginia constitutional convention of 1902, he said these were intended to ``eliminate the darky'' as a factor in politics.
They made no bones about what they were doing.
Glass told his fellow convention delegates: ``This plan of popular suffrage will eliminate the darky as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county in the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the White race in the affairs government.
Next to this achievement in vital consequence will be the inability of unworthy men of our own race to cheat their way into prominence.''
This was the first great backlash in American history to making progress toward making the ideals of upon which our country was founded true for everyone.
Enter my own family history. My great-grandfather in Alabama around the same time had to take a literacy test in order to be able to register to vote. In this literacy test he was asked questions like: How many bubbles are in a bar of soap? And many other nonsensical questions that the person giving the literacy test could change the answer to based on who was answering the questions.
However, my great-grandfather was a community leader and teacher. He got all the questions right, and the registrar turned to his assistant and said a word I will never say other than in a direct quote: ``I need more questions because this nigger got them all right.''
My great-grandfather got the next set of questions right. Then he was told: You must find three White men to vouch for your character to be able to register to vote. After much effort, he did it, and he voted in every election since.
Now, the second great backlash occurred after the efforts of men like Dr. King; our former colleague, John Lewis; and members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Mr. Clyburn. Because of the Voting Rights Act, many of the things that my family suffered went away, like the poll tax.
Mr. Speaker, when I took my oath of office on this floor 2 years ago, I took my oath of office on my father's Bible. It was an old, tattered Bible from the 1940s. I didn't understand why he wouldn't get a new one. Often as we got to the anniversary of my father's passing I would look through his Bible. On January 5, 2021, he was on my mind as Georgia elected the first Black Senator. I opened the Bible, and an envelope fell out I had never noticed, and inside was his poll tax receipt from when he first registered to vote. Then I understood: He kept it in his Bible to remind him of the sacred right of the right to vote. He kept this Bible even when we tried to give him new ones. This was the one he used to write his sermons every Sunday.
Now, the 24th Amendment banned poll taxes like my father and my grandfather had to pay, but my mother was not able to vote until after the voting rights of 1965 passed. Now, Mr. Speaker, I tell this story because I daresay every member of the Congressional Black Caucus has a story or two or several in their family. In fact, some members of the CBC themselves have these stories, as you will probably hear.
All of this effort culminated in the Voting Rights Act that had an immediate impact on expanding the ability and the participation of Black Americans to vote until the Supreme Court gutted it in Shelby v. Holder because it said that Congress had not created enough of a record to show that voter suppression still existed on the basis of race.
However, just like those delegates in the 1902 Virginia convention, who, when asked: Well, when we give these literacy tests, how will we know if we don't explicitly say that it is on the basis of race?
Those delegates had an answer. They knew it would be up to the person implementing the literacy test, just like with my great-grandfather, to determine whether the questions were right or wrong and if they answered enough.
Now, Congress has failed to restore the provisions that were gutted in the Voting Rights Act, and as a result, we have seen a wave of laws across the country, particularly in the South, throwing up barriers in the way of voting. This is the latest voter suppression in the backlash to progress.
Moreover, now our President issued an executive order I believe last week, and on the floor of this body this week, we will have Jim Crow 2.0, the poll tax of 2025, the SAVE Act, the requirement that every American citizen prove their citizenship.
Mr. Speaker, why is that a poll tax you might ask?
It is because the only documents allowed to prove your citizenship, other than a military ID, costs money. I will give you some examples. The Real ID costs about $42. These are all numbers that I have gotten based on research in either my State or federally.
A passport costs $130. A birth certificate from a State agency is $12 in Virginia. A consular report of birth abroad is $100. A certificate of citizenship is $1,385.
Whether it was $2.12 that my father paid in 1947 or $1,385 that someone has to pay for a certificate of citizenship, it is a poll tax. It is illegal under our Constitution, and it is an effort at voter suppression.
Mr. Speaker, for women, we just heard as we celebrate the final day of Women's History Month, if your name is not the same today as on your birth certificate, then you need a document to show the chain of custody of your name. That is more money, that is more obstacles, that is more hoops to jump through, and that is more voter suppression. The Congressional Black Caucus will not stand silently by and watch it happen.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Mr. Clyburn for his remarks.
Sewell).
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the honorable gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell) for her remarks.
Mr. Speaker, it is now my privilege to yield to the honorable gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson).
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for his remarks.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I stand here as I started, the great-granddaughter of Henry David Davidson, who had to take a literacy test and find three White men to vouch for him to be able to register to vote in 1902.
I stand here the daughter and granddaughter of two men named James Fennimore McClellan, who had to pay poll taxes to be able to register to vote.
I stand here the daughter of Lois McClellan, the first woman in her family who was able to vote when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed in her thirties.
I took my oath of office on the Bible in which my father kept this poll tax receipt to remind me that I owe it to them to fight for the sacred right to vote.
I stand here as the first Black woman elected to Congress from Virginia. Virginia is the birthplace of American democracy, but her labor was long and her birthing pains deep; the home of the first representative democracy in the Western Hemisphere where only White land-owning men could vote; the home, the birthplace, of American slavery; and the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He excluded nearly half a million enslaved men and women, indeed, all the women who resided in the Thirteen Colonies, including in his beloved Monticello.
The Delegates to the Continental Congress ignored Abigail Adams' plea to ``remember the ladies and be [kinder] to them than your ancestors.''
Virginia is the birthplace of James Madison, who was the architect of the Virginia Plan that created a Constitution and a government by, of, and for the people in order to form a more perfect Union.
Not only did they not remember the ladies, but they considered the enslaved people who served them every day to be three-fifths of a person for purposes of this body, apportionment, and taxation, and they excluded indigenous people altogether.
Since 1789, the story of America has been one of each generation trying to make true for all Americans the promise of our founding documents. It is a story of cyclical trauma as the Civil War tore this country apart; Reconstruction sought to bind its wounds; and a violent backlash of white supremacy erased the gains made by formerly enslaved men, like my predecessor John Mercer Langston, the first Black man to serve in this body from Virginia.
It is a story of persistence, the persistence of women forcing a seat at the table of democracy and bringing a folding chair like Shirley Chisholm when they weren't let in. It is a story of the Federal Government advancing, retreating, advancing, and retreating in the battle to protect every American citizen's right to vote.
We are in the backlash right now that we have seen to that progress, and I stand here with my father's poll tax receipt behind me to remind me: We cannot go back. We cannot go back to a time when, in the name of voter integrity, barriers are put in people's way, poll taxes are put in people's way, and the requirement to pay money to prove you have the right to vote is imposed on American citizens.
Mr. Speaker, I am tired. I am tired of fighting the same fights as my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents, but I fight those fights as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the conscience of the Congress, from a position of more power and strength than they ever dreamed. I fight those fights so that our children and grandchildren don't have to.
I implore this body not to take a giant step back by imposing Jim Crow 2.0 and a poll tax through the SAVE Act or the President's executive order.
The right to vote is sacred. We will defend it.
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