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
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Chairman, speaking of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King declared that: ``This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.'' I say to you today that the Voting Rights Act, like the Emancipation Proclamation that preceded it a century before, was also a momentous decree which came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Americans who for decades had been subjected to the withering injustice of racial discrimination and electoral disenfranchisement.
The Gohmert amendment seeks to diminish the light of continued hope offered by the VRA. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no ordinary piece of legislation. For millions of Americans and myself, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a sacred treasure, earned by the sweat and toil and tears and blood of ordinary yet heroic Americans who showed the world it was possible to transform their society by having the courage to defy entrenched and systematic racial discrimination and disenfranchisement.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, which we MUST vote to reauthorize today was enacted to remedy a history of systemic and widespread discrimination in certain areas of the country. Presented with a record of systematic defiance by certain States and jurisdictions that could not be overcome by litigation, this Congress--led by President Lyndon Johnson, from my own home state of Texas--took the steps necessary to stop it. It is instructive to recall the words of President Johnson when he proposed the Voting Rights Act to the Congress in 1965:
Rarely are we met with a challenge ..... to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such as an issue ..... the command of the Constitution is plain. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.
I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.
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