Another Blight on American History
Floor Speech
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Mrs. FOUSHEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for anchoring this Special Order hour.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today alongside my colleagues in opposition to the all-out assault on Black Americans' right to vote in the wake of Trump's Supreme Court's choice to gut the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act was a piece of legislation that was won in blood. Though we can see the racism and hatred still present in our Nation, the passage of the Voting Rights Act was a line in the sand: that we would protect and include Black voices in our democracy.
In the nearly 200 years between the establishment of this country and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, millions of Black Americans died fighting for this right.
It wasn't a right that we achieved just through a protest in Selma, where they attacked hundreds of our brothers and sisters. It wasn't a right that we achieved just through a march to the Capitol alongside hundreds of thousands of people across our communities. It was a right that we achieved also through the struggle of the millions of Black Americans whose stories were never told and whose voices were never heard by our government.
The millions of Black Americans throughout our history organized and fought, without the recognition that they deserved, to lay the groundwork for people like me to have the opportunity to represent the very congressional districts where we once attended segregated elementary schools.
The passage of the Voting Rights Act was that hope that, finally, we would no longer go without our voices being heard and that none of us would have to die for that right ever again.
Now, as if we needed any confirmation of the rationale behind the senseless Supreme Court ruling, Republican statehouses nationwide are now mobilizing in an effort to target Black Members of Congress and Black majority districts.
In Tennessee, they ignored Black representatives locked in arms on the floor of the State legislature as they dismantled the only Black majority district in a State where the Clinton 12 once marched for their right to attend integrated schools.
In Alabama, they stared on as my colleague, Congressman Figures, pleaded with them to stop redrawing the court-mandated congressional map that gave Alabama, the State at the epicenter of the modern civil rights movement, two Black Members of Congress for the first time in its history.
In Virginia, they overthrew a referendum that would help balance the power in Congress, the same State that once approved a referendum by white supremacists to rewrite the State constitution in order to disenfranchise Black voters.
In my State, North Carolina, we have seen this playbook carried out with the redrawing of congressional maps to eliminate the seats of three Democrats and the redrawing of that congressional map just a few years later in a concerted effort to attack Black lawmakers.
I consider myself incredibly lucky to still be here in the Halls of Congress while many of our fellow Black lawmakers have not been as fortunate.
As one of the few Members of Congress left who experienced the systemic segregation put in place across the South firsthand as a young girl in an all-Black elementary school, I stand here with this message: We will not go back.
We deserve more than to have our government stomp on our voices, our representation, and our votes. Just as I deserved access to the same elementary school as the White boys and girls, our ancestors fought, bled, and died for the right to vote and the right to have our voices heard by Congress.
As we feel their pain with every step back that this government forces upon us, rest assured that we will always come back stronger.
Your cheating of our electoral systems through gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement is an admission that your leadership has failed the American people. We see through you. We will not rest, and we will continue to honor the work of our ancestors with action.
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