Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Votng 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. DURBIN. Mr. President, if you are a student of history, this is a moment that you should reflect on and savor. Just a short time ago, I came to the floor and sat in the back row and listened as Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts spoke. I wanted to be here to see it because Senator Ted Kennedy was one of the few who was a Member of the Senate when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, more than 40 years ago. He recounted the struggle that led to the passage of that legislation--and it was a struggle. He talked about President Lyndon Baines Johnson coming back to Capitol Hill, with which he was so familiar as a Member of the Senate, and just a few feet away from where I am standing, in one of the small rooms known as the President's Room, signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I wanted to come and hear Ted Kennedy tell that story because I do appreciate it--not just as history but because of what that meant to America. Some say it was the most significant civil rights legislation in our history. It is hard to argue that it was not because if Americans don't have the right to vote, they don't have the most basic right that we appreciate and treasure as American citizens.

On the day that President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he said it was one of the most monumental laws in the history of American freedom. And then he said:

Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that's ever been won on any battlefield. Today we strike away the last major shackle of fierce and ancient bonds.

Those beautiful words were quoted in the autobiography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They are a reminder that what we are about today is not just another piece of legislation. It is only 12 or 13 pages long--small by Senate standards--but what it does is make another commitment by our generation to the same basic values and principles that guided this Congress to pass the first Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In August of last year, I was invited to Atlanta, GA, to represent my caucus of the Senate to march with civil rights leaders and ordinary people to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that Voting Rights Act. I was proud to march in the footsteps of civil rights giants, to celebrate a bill that has often been called the most significant civil rights law ever passed by Congress.

It has broad support today. Yesterday, in my Senate Judiciary Committee it passed unanimously, with a bipartisan vote. That is a great tribute to that committee and where America's thinking is today on Capitol Hill. But it was bitterly fought in 1965. People died for that law. Civil rights workers James Cheney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and so many others were murdered simply because they had the courage to step up and say every American has the right to vote.

It has been so long ago, it sounds like ancient history, and you may be puzzled to think: People would give their lives? Ordinary people would die over this, over this battle? The answer is yes. Black, White, and brown Americans came forward and said it was worth dying for because it really was the cornerstone of America's democracy.

Just a few years ago, I made a trip down South, my first step to Selma, AL. When the civil rights march at Selma took place, I was a student here in Washington. I sat around in my apartment with several other students and we talked about getting in a car and driving down to Selma and being part of that march. I remember it like it was yesterday. I couldn't get away from my job, I had other excuses, and I didn't go. I have thought about that so many times, how I wished I had been there at that moment, to have been part of that historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but I missed it and regretted it ever since.

Three years ago, Congressman JOHN LEWIS, from the State of Georgia, invited me, Senator Brownback of Kansas, and others to join him in a little commemorative pilgrimage to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Early one Sunday morning we got up and drove over to Selma and JOHN LEWIS and SAM BROWNBACK and I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

JOHN LEWIS was the perfect person to bring us on that pilgrimage because he had been there on that bloody day when the first march took place. When we went there on that Sunday morning, it was quiet and peaceful. But he marched us down to the very spot where the Alabama State Troopers turned and started beating him--beating him unconscious. He fell to the ground and nearly died. But he survived and that cause survived and today JOHN LEWIS is a Congressman.

What does that have to do with this debate? Just last week, Congressman JOHN LEWIS spoke in the House about the history of the Voting Rights Act, and here is what he said:

When we marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, it was dangerous. It was a matter of life and death. I was beaten, I had a concussion at the bridge. I almost died. I gave blood, but some of my colleagues gave their very lives.

It is good for us to reflect on that and to value what John Lewis and his courage meant to America and so many others, and why this bill at this moment is important for America. We honor the legacy of civil rights heroes by extending the Voting Rights Act provisions that would expire in just a short time.

The bill itself is named after three extraordinary civil rights heroes: Coretta Scott King, who continued her husband's leadership of America's movement for racial justice and human rights; Rosa Parks, what a brave lady, who ignited the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott; and Fannie Lou Hamer, the sharecropper who became a civil rights champion. She was nearly beaten to death trying to register to vote. And her famous declaration? Fannie Lou Hamer said, ``I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.''

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 390 to 33. It was a proud moment for that Chamber. In his autobiography, Dr. Martin Luther King reflects on this Voting Rights Act, and this is what Dr. King wrote:

When President Johnson declared that Selma, AL, is joined in American history with Lexington, Concord, and Appomattox, he honored not only our embattled Negroes, but the overwhelming majority of the nation, Negro and white. The victory in Selma is now being written in the Congress. Before long, more than a million Negroes will be new voters and psychologically, new people. Selma is a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in the dark streets of Selma, the best of American democratic instincts arose from across the nation to overcome it.

What powerful and hopeful words.

It is wrong for us to equate racism and prejudice with the South in America. Sadly, it has touched every corner of our great Nation. Every one of us in our towns and communities and villages, North and South, East and West, have struggled with some form of racism in the course of our history.

In the 1960s, Illinois fielded its first African-American candidate, a woman named Fannie Jones from East St. Louis, IL, my hometown, who ran for clerk of the Illinois Supreme Court. She lost. It wasn't even close. But she was the first to try to run statewide.

Then fast-forward. By 1978, Illinois elected its first African-American statewide, Roland Burris of Chicago, as State comptroller.

Now bring it to the present day, and I am honored that my State, Illinois, the land of Lincoln, can claim that the two biggest vote getters in its history are African Americans: my close friend, Secretary of State Jesse White, and my colleague, in whom I have such great pride, BARACK OBAMA the two biggest vote getters in the land of Lincoln. It says a lot about how far we have come just in my short political lifetime.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to reauthorize this bill. Today, the Members of the Senate have an opportunity to make history by passing this strong, bipartisan extension of the Voting Rights Act. A lot of people argued when this debate began that it was unnecessary. Voting rights? Where is that a problem in America, they said?

I wish it were not a problem.

Listen again to what Congressman JOHN LEWIS said last week:

Yes, we have made some progress. We have come a distance. We are no longer met with bullwhips, fire hoses, and violence when we attempt to register and vote. But the sad fact is, the sad truth is, discrimination still exists, and that is why we still need the Voting Rights Act....... We cannot separate the debate today from our history and the past we have traveled.

We had hearings before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, more hearings than I have ever seen on any single piece of legislation: 21 hearings on the Voting Rights Act over the past 9 months, 12 in the House, 9 in the Senate. Over 100 witnesses appeared or submitted statements for the RECORD, thousands of pages of reports and evidence, so there would be no question about the need for this bill.

I attended and listened to some of these hearings. They were contentious. People were debating whether we needed a Voting Rights Act or whether this was some vestige of America's past which had no relevance today. But the evidence shows that attempts at voter discrimination are not simply a chapter from our history; they continue to threaten us and our democracy today. We have made progress as a nation over the past few decades, but discrimination endures, many times in more subtle forms.

A recent example was in the State of Georgia which passed two different voter ID laws over the past year, over the strong objections of the African Americans who live in that State. They argued that this new Georgia law would diminish the voting rights of the minorities, the poor, the elderly, and those without formal education. Both of Georgia's laws were struck down by Federal courts. The first law was determined to constitute a modern day poll tax, an unconstitutional infringement on the fundamental right to vote. The second law, slightly improved, was struck down last week by a Federal judge who ruled it was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

This is what the New York Times said recently about ``Georgia's new poll tax,'' as they call it:

In 1966, the Supreme Court held that the poll tax was unconstitutional. Nearly 40 years later, Georgia still is charging people to vote, this time with a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses--a group that is disproportionately poor, black, and elderly--to pay $20 or more for a state ID card. Georgia went ahead with this even though there is not a single place in the entire city of Atlanta where the cards are sold. The law is a national disgrace.

And a reminder that laws which we now look back on with embarrassment, laws that required African Americans to pay a poll tax before they could vote, laws which had literacy tests and constitutional tests before a person can vote, and say: That is the past; thank goodness it is behind us. This Georgia law which imposed a new requirement for a voter ID, which would have cost many voters $20, was, in the view of the Federal court system, a new poll tax.

Unfortunately, it is part of a pattern. Since 1982, the Federal Justice Department has objected to nearly 100 proposed changes to election procedures in Georgia alone on the grounds that the changes would have a discriminatory impact on minority voters. The Justice Department has sent Federal observers to monitor nearly twice the number of elections in Georgia since 1982 as it did between 1965 and 1982.

Let me add again, though I am giving examples from Georgia, I do not stand here as a northerner by definition and argue we only find discrimination in the South. Discrimination and race has haunted our Nation from coast to coast. It is naive and wrong to believe it is only a southern phenomenon, but the fact is, in this situation, in Georgia, repeatedly minority voters have been challenged and have been denied the right to vote.

Both of the protections, the requirement the Justice Department approve changes to electoral procedures in States with histories of voter discrimination and Federal monitoring of elections in such jurisdictions, are only possible because of the sections of the Voting Rights Act that must be renewed.

Let's take another case that is not in the South. Eighty-three percent of Buffalo County, South Dakota, is Native American, but they were packed into a single State legislative district. Non-Natives, who make up 17 percent of the population of the county, controlled two out of three seats on the county commission. Buffalo County was successfully sued in the year 2003 in South Dakota. The case was settled by a consent decree. In that consent decree, Buffalo County, South Dakota, admitted that its plan was discriminatory and agreed to submit to Federal supervision of future change.

Once again, it was one of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act which would expire without our action today--section 5--that entitled the U.S. Justice Department to protect the rights of Americans to vote in South Dakota.

In another case in 2004, a Federal judge invalidated South Dakota's redistricting plan. In her opinion, the judge described the State's long history of discrimination against Native Americans, including some very recent examples. The judge quoted a South Dakota State legislator who, in expressing opposition to a bill that would have made it easier for Native Americans to register to vote, said in the year 2002:

I'm not sure we want that sort of person in the polling place.

The record is thorough and clear. Voter discrimination continues. It remains a threat to American democracy. We need to pass this renewal of the Voting Rights Act. We need to step back as a nation and ask some important questions, not pat ourselves on the back on a bipartisan basis for passing this.

Why is it so many voting machines in cities where the poorest people live don't work? Why is it people are denied their choices on the ballots because they are stuck with voting machinery that is antiquated or just plain dysfunctional? Why is it those who are challenged time and time again turn out to be the poor, the dispossessed? Why is it they have the toughest time when it comes to voting in America, if this is truly going to be a land of equal opportunity?

There were attempts in the House and Senate to weaken this Voting Rights Act and I am glad they did not prevail. I am glad what we have before the Senate today is a strong, clear version of renewing this law. I want it to pass, but I don't want the conversation to end at that point. I hope we will accept the responsibility to challenge any State and to challenge even ourselves if we are creating unnecessary and unfair obstacles to voters who are trying to exercise the most basic right they have as Americans.

Whether you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, we need to be united in supporting the Voting Rights Act. This law, above all others, should be above politics and partisanship. We need to make sure that today in the Senate, we are all on the right side of history. The Voting Rights Act has served as a beacon of our democracy for over 40 years. It should not be allowed to expire until voting discrimination has expired.

When it passed in 1965, it was because of the moral and physical courage of people such as Congressman JOHN LEWIS of Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others. Passing the Voting Rights Act also required the persistence and courage of Members of Congress.

No one in the Senate pushed longer and harder for voting rights for all Americans than a man named Paul Douglas of Illinois. My connection to the Senate began as a college student in 1966, a year after this law passed. I was an intern in the office of Senator Paul Douglas. I had the privilege to work in his office. I guess I was lucky in that he needed me every day. You cannot say that very often for an intern, but he needed me because Senator Douglas was a veteran of the Marine Corps, fought in World War II, and had lost the use of his left arm in combat. He insisted on signing every letter, so every night they would stack up all the mail that had been typed by all the people in his office, and Senator Douglas would sit at the long table, starting at 5 o'clock, signing the letters, making little notes, making corrections. I got to sit next to him and pull the letters away. I was dazzled. There I was within a foot or two of this great man who had done so much.

He came back after fighting the war to fight for the rights of those who were being discriminated against. He gave a lot of political blood in the Senate fighting for civil rights. If you read the LBJ books, stories of Lyndon Baines Johnson, you know that in the early days, before Lyndon Johnson became the great champion of the civil rights that he was in his late career, he was in pitched battle with the likes of Estes Kefauver, Hubert Humphrey, and Paul Douglas over the issue of civil rights, but the day finally came in 1965 when the Voting Rights Act passed. Senator Paul Douglas said it was his proudest achievement as a Senator.

Today, American troops are risking their lives--and many have given their lives--to secure the right to vote for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The absolute least we can do is to have the courage to protect the right to vote for all Americans by giving resounding, bipartisan support to the renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

I yield the floor.

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