Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006
FANNIE LOU HAMER, ROSA PARKS, AND CORETTA SCOTT KING VOTING RIGHTS ACT REAUTHORIZATION AND AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - July 20, 2006)
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I salute my colleague on her wonderful and heart-felt words.
Mr. President, this is a hallowed moment on the floor of this Senate. We don't have too many of these hallowed moments these days, but passing, working for, voting for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act is just one of those. I rise in proud and full-hearted support of H.R. 9, which is a bicameral and bipartisan bill, thank God, to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.
The bottom line, Mr. President, is this: Without the right to vote in a democracy, people have no power. And while I do believe that race and racism have been a poison that has afflicted America for a long time, and there are many ways to solve that, probably the best is the full and unrequited power to vote. For so long, that power was denied to people of color: Blacks, Hispanics, and others. Now it is not being.
I can tell by my own history, even here in the Congress, the progress we have made. When I got to the Congress in 1980, there were only 17 African Americans in the House. Today, there are 42. That is very close to the percentage of African Americans in American society. That shows you the progress we have made. Without the Voting Rights Act, it clearly would not have happened.
However, we sit in the Senate, and only last year did we again have an African American come to the Senate. There is only one. So while we see the progress in the House of Representatives, we also look in the Senate and see how much longer we have to go.
I am glad that final passage is now imminent, as leaders from both parties are supporting this bill. Let me say this act has been hailed as the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation we have ever passed. The reason is it does not just simply guarantee the right to vote in name, but it ensures the effective exercise of that fundamental right.
Today, when we see the Governor of Georgia and the legislators of Georgia impeding the right to vote, we know that we need a strong and full-throated Voting Rights Act. And, thank God, the attempts to dilute it--mainly, I am sorry to say--coming from the other body, did not succeed.
Our Founding Fathers said it best when they penned these words in the Declaration of Independence: Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Simply put, in our Nation there can be no consent without unfettered access to the voting booth. A renewed and reenergized Voting Rights Act is exactly the right formula to ensuring equality in the political process for all Americans.
In 1965, when President Johnson signed the bill into law, there were only 300 minorities elected to State, local, or Federal office. North, South, East, and West, people of color were not represented. Today, four decades later, in large part because of this Voting Rights Act, 10,000 minorities serve as elected officials.
I have seen the Voting Rights Act have an effect on my city. New York is one of the most diverse cities in the country. And in our city, the Voting Rights Act has been extremely effective in ensuring that all our citizens are able to participate equally in the political process. However, many of the act's successes in New York--we think we are a modern country and, of course, a modern city--but they have only come since the last time we renewed its provisions. The first and only African-American mayor of New York wasn't elected until May of 1989. The first and only African American wasn't elected to statewide office until 1994. In 2002, the first and only Asian American was elected to the city council. Finally, just last year, a mayoral candidate became the first and only Latino to win his party's nomination.
So while these strides are important, they are too few and too recent to declare that the promise of the Voting Rights Act has been realized. The bottom line is that the Voting Rights Act has worked to remove barriers from countless men and women from all backgrounds to participate in the political process, to run for office, to enter and thrive in the political process, but there is still a lot of work to do. We cannot and thankfully will not let the act expire.
Mr. President, I look forward to casting my vote in favor of H.R. 9 later today, and urge all of my colleagues to do so. I am hopeful that we can have a unanimous vote on the floor of this Senate.
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