Congressional Black Caucus

Floor Speech

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Ms. SEWELL of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I applaud the CBC for this
Special Order hour, and I commend my colleague from New Jersey (Mr.
Payne) and my colleague from Illinois (Ms. Kelly) for choosing such a
great topic for tonight's Special Order hour.

Selma, Lord, Selma. I have the great pleasure of standing before you
not only as a Representative who represents the great city of Selma but
as a native of Selma, Alabama, and a lifelong member of the historic
Brown Chapel AME Church.

I know that the journey I now take, the journey that many others who
are here today take, was only made possible because of the courage,
fortitude, and determination of those brave men and women on that
bridge, Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

We who have the privilege and honor of taking this journey must ask
ourselves: What will we do to extend the legacy? What will we do to
protect the legacy?

Selma is the soul of America. It is the place where the struggle for
civil rights and voting rights began, the epicenter, if you will, of
the voting rights movement.

It deserves to be more than just a footnote in the history books. It
deserves to take up chapters in the history books, the tactical and
strategic voices of Martin Luther King and those brave men and women of
SCLC and SNCC that had the fortitude and had the intellect to see this
as a strategy, to know that they were speaking not only for themselves
and their children, but for future generations.

Only a true visionary could defeat such opposition with little more
than a dream, and Dr. King held so tightly to his that it forced our
country to become a more equal and just nation.

Some want to forget the painful past. I know many in my district and
many in my city would like to forget our painful past, but we cannot
turn the pages as if certain chapters were never written; nor can we
celebrate how far we have come without first acknowledging where we
have been. Bloody Sunday forced America to confront its own inhumanity.
Our painful past has ushered in a new day.

As I tell my constituents, out of our painful past came the birth of
a movement that changed a nation, and from that movement came a human
rights movement that changed a world. If we don't write our own
history, others will tell it for us, and they may not be so kind, they
may not tell our history the way we would tell our history.

My father grew up in Selma, as did I, and the Selma of my childhood
was very, very different than the Selma of my father's childhood. There
has been progress. My father went to segregated schools in Selma. My
father drank from ``colored only'' fountains in Selma. My father's
mother never got the chance to vote, though she tried to register
several times.

The Selma that I grew up in had an integrated public high school, a
public high school that was 55 percent African American and 45 percent
White. Yes, across town, there was an all-White private school.

I want you to know that the Selma I grew up in, in the seventies and
eighties, it produced me as its first Black valedictorian of Selma High
School. I know that Selma and the journey that we all take now because
of Selma was only made possible because of the bravery of others.
As I stood to give my speech as a valedictorian in 1982 at Selma High
School, I remember standing up and saying:

Maybe one day I could join the likes of a Charlie Rangel,
of a John Lewis, in the House of Congress.

I said it as a pious, overly confident teenager probably, but I said
it with every vigor because I believed in my heart that I could be and
do anything. Why? Because the people of that community nurtured me,
Black and White, my teachers, my Girl Scout troop leaders, my Sunday
school teachers.

Yes, I had proud parents who were educators, educated at Alabama
State University, and because of their education at this wonderful
quality institution of higher learning, I had a chance to go to
Princeton--but I had more than that. I had an obligation to give back,
to make sure that others had an opportunity to walk through those same
doors. It wasn't enough to be the first.

In fact, I was most proud 5 years after I graduated from Princeton
that April Williams from Selma High School got to go to Princeton. I
must have done something right.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would have never been possible had it
not been for the intellect, the mind of these wonderful leaders, some
known. All of us know about the contributions of our colleague, John
Lewis; all of us know about the contributions of the SCLC, Andy Young,
and Martin Luther King.

Some unknown, like my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Richie Jean Jackson,
she was featured in the movie ``Selma'' because it was her home, the
home that she shared with Dr. Jackson, the first Black dentist in
Selma, that housed Martin Luther King and Andrew Young and all those
leaders every time they came to Selma because they couldn't stay at the
all-White hotel.

Mrs. Jackson was my sixth grade teacher. Mrs. Jackson did not live to
see the movie ``Selma,'' but I am proud that this body is seeking to
provide a Congressional Gold Medal to the foot soldiers of the
movement, so that the Richie Jacksons, Mrs. Jacksons of the world, who
had the bravery to go and be on that bridge Bloody Sunday or Turnaround
Tuesday or the ultimate final march from Selma to Montgomery, that they
are acknowledged by this Nation for the sacrifices that they made.

In closing, I want to remind my colleagues of my guest at the State
of the Union, January 20, 2015. My special guest was the 103-year-old
Amelia Boynton.

Amelia Boynton was characterized in the movie ``Selma'' as the proud
African American woman who told Coretta Scott King:

You are prepared. You are the descendants of kings and
queens. Your heritage is one and your bloodline is one that
survived slave ships. You are prepared.

Amelia Boynton is known for her bravery that Bloody Sunday when she
was bludgeoned, but she came back 2 days later on Turnaround Tuesday
and continued to fight in Selma long after this march from Selma to
Montgomery.

She honored us with her presence, and as person after person came up
to her and kissed her on the cheek and said, ``Miss Boynton, I stand on
your shoulders today, thank you,'' Miss Boynton said something very
poignant. She said, ``Everybody keeps talking about being on my
shoulders. I tell them, Get off my shoulders, do your own work, there
is plenty of work to be done.'' I want to remind my colleagues that
there is plenty of work for us still to do.

I want to honor the legacy of Amelia Boynton, F.D. Reese, John Lewis,
and so many; but we cannot honor their legacy without acknowledging
that the Voting Rights Act of 1965, major sections of it, have been
invalidated.

We owe it to that legacy, the legacy and memory of those who fought
so valiantly, that this body should once again work together to make
sure that Federal protections are there because, as we know, progress
is always elusive, all battles become new again, and there is a renewed
assault on voting.

It may not be counting how many jelly beans are in a jar or how many
county judges there are in the State of Alabama; but, nevertheless, we
still have modern-day barriers to voting that we must overcome.

I hope that we have the courage of our own convictions to see the
movie ``Selma'' as a beginning of a national conversation about how we
can continue to recommit ourselves to the ideals that were fought on
that Bloody Sunday. I know that if we combined our hearts and our
minds, both sides of the aisle will see that it is in everyone's best
interest that all Americans have the right to vote.

I thank my colleagues of the CBC for having this Special Order hour.
I invite all of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to come to
Selma, to experience the living history, and I hope that we will all
come away from the 50th commemoration of the march from Selma to
Montgomery with a renewed vigor to once again provide Federal
protection for all Americans to exercise that sacred right to vote.

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