Fighting Voter Suppression

Floor Speech

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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for her leadership and her stewardship. I thank the body for convening during this very special hour.

Democracy is on trial this week.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight with a fervor and the burden of history on all of our backs. The question is: Do we go forward in faith, or do we go backwards in despair?

I rise tonight not just for myself as a legislator, but for all of those who never made it to this mike, for all of those who did not have the opportunity to be viewed as full human beings in our great country, for those who marched in the dust, for those who bled on the bridges, for those who faced the dogs and the batons right here in the United States of America, for those who met the fire hoses just to try to claim their right to vote.

Mr. Speaker, both of my grandfathers served in World War II. Oftentimes, when I look at Union Station, I remember that my grandfather, having fought the Nazis in World War II, coming back to the United States and into Washington, D.C., he had to leave the first- class train car as a soldier and go into the back because he was considered a Negro, a colored man. Nazi POWs went to the first-class train car as they headed back toward South Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because the right to vote, the crown jewel of our democracy, is under attack again. We have seen this play out before, and we know how it ends if we don't act. Tonight, I say: We have come too far and there is too many to go back in time again.

In 1965, a year before I was born, after 346 years, African Americans were finally given full citizenship with that crown jewel of the Voting Rights Act.

I am 59 years of age. I am the first generation in my family, all born in America--all born in America--who has full equal rights. In my lifetime, at the age of 59, my children will have fewer rights than I have had. Those are troubling signs.

In 1965, the Voting Rights Act became the law of the land. It was signed in blood and baptized by the courage of men and women who dared to believe in something better. Selma gave us the foot soldiers, Montgomery gave us the movement, and the movement gave us the right to vote.

Yet, here we are in 2025, and it feels like we are back at square one. This week, the President signed an executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote in Federal elections. He cut off mail-in ballots unless they arrive on time as he cuts the postal workforce. He says that you cannot have ballots that don't arrive on the day of.

Mr. Speaker, ignoring the rural voters, the disabled voters, the traveling soldiers and our veterans, if your State does not comply, he threatens to take away your funding. How is the President expanding democracy? He is asphyxiating our body politics.

This is not policy. This is punishment. This is not democracy. This is deception. That is suppression dressed in a suit and tie.

Don't be fooled by the language. Republicans call it election security. Jim Crow has had a way of cleaning up vile and vitriolic racist words, but I have lived long enough to know that when they say, ``security,'' what they actually mean is ``selectivity.'' When they say, ``integrity,'' what they actually mean is ``inequality.''

Let me be clear. We don't have a voter fraud problem in this country. We have a voter suppression crisis. We have polling places shutting down in Black neighborhoods. We have long lines in indigenous communities that stretch around the corner and throughout the night. We have purges, ID laws, and maps drawn to divide rather than to unite.

Mr. Speaker, we have courts gutting the Civil Rights Act, statehouses cooking up new restrictions, and a President threatening to override the will of the people with the stroke of a pen.

Mr. Speaker, that is not justice. That is regression. That is going in reverse. We don't want to go back. We are not going back. We won't go back to a time when folks had to count jellybeans in jars to prove they were American enough.

We won't go back to a time when the color of your skin determined the weight of your ballot or your opportunity to have a ballot in your hand. We won't go back to a time when power was hoarded by the few and denied to the many. We are marching forward with ballots, not bullets; love, not fear; and with hope, not hate.

When you suppress the vote, you suppress the American Dream. You suppress the worker, the teacher, the farm laborer, the preacher, the nurse, the single mom juggling three jobs just to make it to election day. You suppress the very soul of our democracy.

Mr. Speaker, some would say order is needed. Let me say something about order. There is no order without justice, and there is no justice when you erect barriers to silence people instead of listening to them.

We need access. We need more access, not less. We need more voices, not fewer. We need to make voting easier, not harder; more joyful, not more burdensome; and more sacred, not more cynical.

Mr. Speaker, this Congress must not wait another day. We must pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore what the Supreme Court gutted when it ripped out preclearance. We must pass the Freedom to Vote Act to guarantee that every citizen, no matter the ZIP Code that they live in, their income, or ancestry, can register, vote, and be counted with dignity.

We must defend the courts and protect the power of judges to stop injustice before it spreads and metastasizes because, if we silence the judiciary, we silence the law.

While we legislate, we must also organize. We must educate. We must inspire new generations who understand the vote not just as a right, but as a duty, as a voice, as a weapon of choice, and a peace instrument in our long fight and struggle for its freedom and total emancipation.

We must keep people marching in the streets for those who marched before us and those continuing and coming behind.

We must keep dreaming for a democracy big enough for all of us, not just for a favored few.

We must keep building the more perfect union that the Framers spoke out about but never completed.

Mr. Speaker, tonight, in the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers--Fannie Lou Hamer said she was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I know some people are asking why we are relitigating this again.

Some people who are male and White have all of the privileges. Some people think democracy began in 1776, when only White male landowners had the right to vote. We have been a work in progress, and God is not finished with it yet.

I speak for Medgar Evers and Malcolm and Martin and for the people in line in church basements, gymnasiums, and mobile vans who believe in this country even when this country forgot about them.

They are watching as we march. History is watching us. The past is listening.

The future is haunting. The world is watching to see if America is still what it claims to be. Let us not fail the moment. Let us be worthy of the dream and our ideals. Let us not be thick on deeds and thin on action.

Let us be worthy of the dream and aspire to live up to the words of our Constitution. Let us protect the vote, not for ourselves but for all those who cannot be in this Chamber, who are counting on us to speak truth to power, pass laws, and lead with love. The vote is power. The vote is our voice.

The vote is sacred, and I will not rest until every hand that reaches for a ballot is met with a promise, not with a barrier.

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