Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting 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
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Mr. CLYBURN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner, Chairman Watt and Ranking Member Conyers for the tremendous work they have done on getting us to this point with this very important piece of legislation.
Mr. Chairman, I want to address this issue of time. Those of us who have read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, letter from the Birmingham city jail may recall that King dealt with the question of time. In dealing with that question, he said that he had come to the conclusion that the people of ill will in our society make a much better use of time than the people of goodwill. He thought in his writings that we are going to be called to repent in this generation not just for the vitriolic words and deeds of bad people, but for the appalling silence of good people.
This Congress broke its silence on voting rights violations some 41 years ago. Although the 1964 elections triggered the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was rooted in 10 generations of slavery, from 1619 to 1863, giving you 244 years. That is 10 generations. Then another 102 years of what we call ``creative devices'' that came into being in 1863 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 got rid of.
These creative devices, when I first ran for office, I ran from Charleston County in something called ``full-slate voting.'' It meant that there were 11 positions available and one African American running, in order for any vote for that African American to count, you had to vote against that person 10 times, because for your vote to count, you had to cast 11 votes for that position. That was the law that this act got rid of.
We also had something called ``numbered posts'' that set up racially polarized voting. The Voting Rights Act got rid of that.
We also had at-large voting, rather than voting from districts. The Voting Rights Act got rid of that.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I heard the gentleman earlier talked about what was going on in Georgia. For some strange reason, nobody is talking about what happened in the 41st year of this act when Georgia put in place voting cards in order to vote. You had to have a picture, government-issued identification card.
That is a creative device that ought to be submitted to the Justice Department. Now, it was; and the Justice Department accepted it. But the courts looked at it and said, this is unconstitutional. All of this is made possible by various sections of the Voting Rights Act. It ought to be extended for 25 years. I plead to the Members of this body to do so.
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