Recognizing 155th Anniversary of 13th Amendment

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLYBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Butterfield for yielding to me to talk on this very momentous occasion. I thank him for bringing attention to this issue, the 155th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Now, having not listened to all of the discussion before, and I hope I am not too repetitive here, but I want to bring to the attention of all here this evening and our listeners two conflicting events.

Now, we often hear talk of the Emancipation Proclamation. The fact of the matter is, there were two Emancipation Proclamations, the first one freeing the formerly enslaved living in the District of Columbia, and that became effective upon its signing in 1862.

The second one, also written in 1862 and signed by President Abraham Lincoln, was to become effective January 1, 1863, and that was to free the other enslaved people in the former slave States, which meant that in those States that did not have officially sanctioned slavery but did have slaves, in order for them to be free and in order for the descendants of those from the District of Columbia and those affected by those two proclamations, we needed a constitutional amendment, because as we know, executive orders could very well change with the next executive.

So Abraham Lincoln set out to lay the groundwork for the Thirteenth Amendment, and so we are here celebrating the 155th anniversary of that.

But we also this week will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of another momentous event. 150 years ago come Saturday, we will commemorate the swearing in to this august body the first African American to serve in the United States Congress, Joseph H. Rainey.

Joseph Rainey was from Georgetown, South Carolina, and early in his life moved to Charleston. He worked as a barber. His father was a barber, and he took up the barbering trade, and made enough money as a barber to purchase his and his family's freedom.

Now, the interesting thing about this is that I often talk about the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who came to this country in the 1830s to study our penal system, but while here, he saw what he considered to be a certain magic about this country. Back around 1836, he wrote a book, a two-volume book, called ``Democracy in America.''

Now, de Tocqueville, in trying to figure out what it was that he considered to be magical about this country, wrote in those books this little phrase:

America is not great because it is more enlightened than any other nation . . .

Just think about that, not more enlightened than any other nation, because we had slavery. This was the 1830s. That was not an enlightened institution.

But, he said:

. . . rather, because it has always been able to repair its faults.

Just think about that. De Tocqueville said that this country is great because it is able to repair its faults, writing that at a time when we had slavery in this country in the 1830s. It was some 30 years later when slavery was abolished.

Now, the thing that I like to point out is the fact that we talk about all of these things that happened during Reconstruction, and most times the things we are talking about did not happen during Reconstruction, they happened after Reconstruction.

Reconstruction was ushered in by the freeing of slaves in 1863. It came to an end in 1877 when Rutherford B. Hayes removed all of the Federal oversight and this country lapsed into a period that we call the Jim Crow era starting around 1877 and lasting all the way up to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Now, I wanted to point that out tonight as we celebrate these milestones in our history, the 155th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment and we will be celebrating this week the 150th anniversary of the first African American to come to this august body. But I want to point out something interesting about that.

The last African American to serve in that century, to serve in this body, left Congress in 1897, George Washington Murray, the last from South Carolina.

Now, I know G.K. Butterfield will get up and tell you about 1901, when Mr. White left the Congress and left with that great speech, Like the Phoenix, but in South Carolina, the first State to give an African American to this body, the last one, George Washington Murray, left in 1897, and there was not another person of color to represent South Carolina until I got elected in 1992, 95 years later.

Why? Because of something called voter suppression.

I think that a lot of these former slave States have gone back into history and ripped out the textbooks, and we are seeing voter suppression being practiced today much like it was practiced back in the 19th century when they successfully removed all people of color from elective office.

So I want to thank G.K. Butterfield for bringing attention to this today. It gives us an opportunity to ask the people of the country to really think about this period of time and think about what we are experiencing today.

Think about what is going on in the State of Georgia today, when we see interposition and nullification falling from the lips of the President of the United States in trying to overturn an election, much like they did that ran all Blacks out of Congress and much as they did that took Blacks out of elective office, took Blacks out of schools to be educated, all those things, and made it illegal for people of color to even get an education.

I would hope that during this period of time, the people of this country will think a little bit about what is going on around us and just remember there is precedence for what the President of the United States is doing today.

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