Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reathorization and Amendments Act of 2006

FANNIE LOU HAMER, ROSA PARKS, AND CORETTA SCOTT KING VOTING RIGHTS ACT REAUTHORIZATION AND AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - July 13, 2006)

BREAK IN THE TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the Voting Rights Act and urge this House to decisively reauthorize this legislation for another 25 years. The Voting Rights Act has been reauthorized and upheld for more than four decades, and today we must act to ensure that the provisions set to expire next year remain in effect and continue to protect the sacred right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act is one of the most important civil rights initiatives ever enacted, protecting minority voters from discrimination, and ensuring for all Americans, the right to vote in a fair and equal voting process. This bill was necessary when it was passed in 1965 and it is necessary today. It continues to work effectively to combat discrimination and its reauthorization will make certain that the gains that have been achieved for minority voters are not rolled back. Clearly we have come a long way, but as recently as yesterday a U.S. District Court blocked the enforcement of a controversial voter I.D. law, which would have required the presentation of state-issued photo identification prior to casting your ballot. In the last decade Georgia and several other southern states have continued to experience problems with race-based redistricting and government reorganization. These laws may not be as egregious as the challenges of the past, but they are no less discriminatory and reinforce the need for federal monitoring to protect minority rights.

Before I was elected to Congress in 1992, my area of Georgia had only been represented by an African American once in its history; it was for less than three months in 1870 and 1871. Jefferson Long was the first black Member of Congress from Georgia and only the second nationwide. It took 121 years and the passage of the Voting Rights Act before another African American was elected. This bill is vital to ensuring that minority voices are heard in our nation's capital and at every other level of government.

Indeed only a few short years before Jefferson Long's service in Congress, Georgians elected their first African American state legislators. The election of 1868 was the first in which African Americans in Georgia could participate in the electoral process through voting or running for office. It was hotly debated in the Georgia General Assembly whether or not the Constitution guaranteed African Americans the right to run for office, or simply to vote. Despite this debate, 33 African Americans were elected to the legislature in 1868 and began their service that summer--they were outnumbered four to one in the body by their white colleagues. They endured taunting and torment in the newspapers and on the Floor of the General Assembly. The legislature voted along color lines and expelled the black members of the General Assembly--the 33 were booted from the floor.

One of them--Henry McNeal Turner--said, ``You may drive us out, but you will light a torch never to be put out.'' Another, Tunis Campbell, journeyed from Atlanta to Washington and asked the new President, Ulysses S. Grant, to intercede. Grant and the

Congress did the right thing and ordered the Georgia legislature to readmit the expelled legislators and all 33 reclaimed their seats in Atlanta. But, by the turn of the 20th century, the devices of Jim Crow--the poll tax, literacy tests, whites-only primaries, and others--had forced each and every black representative out of office. In 1976, while I was in the General Assembly myself, the black legislators caucus donated a statue to commemorate the centennial of their ordeal.

Today, in Washington, DC, we are called to remember Turner's call--we must not let the torch go out. The Voting Rights Act brings electoral law out of the dark and promises that the discrimination and intimidation that plagued voting in the past will not be tolerated in the present. The reauthorization of this bill will renew that promise to our children and our grandchildren. We should not, we must not, and we cannot allow it to be extinguished. We must extend the Voting Rights Act today--without amendment!

BREAK IN THE TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov/