A Tribute to Amelia Boynton Robinson, Congressman Louis Stokes, and Julian Bond

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. I thank my good friend, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, first, for her kind and generous words, but especially today for her leadership of this Special Order, which is characteristic of her leadership in this Congress. I am so pleased that our chair Rep. G.K. BUTTERFIELD has been here and spoken and that we have heard from several other Members.

I just want to say a few words about this troika of African Americans who have written their signatures across our time. You have heard their biographies. I don't want to recount their extraordinary bios, because that is not the only reason we are honoring them with this Special Order. I just want to say something about what they meant to me.

Two of them I knew personally: Representative Louis Stokes, whose many years in the Congress happened to overlap with my first years here; and, of course, Julian Bond, whom I knew best.

I was not fortunate to know Amelia Boynton. She may have been the most courageous woman in the movement of the 1960s, who insisted upon facing death, if necessary, in that march from Selma to Montgomery, and nearly lost her life. I was privileged to be in her presence, as so many Members of Congress were, when we went to Selma this past summer. That was a privilege in and of itself.

I was fortunate to know Congressman Louis Stokes, who was a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus long before I served. This was a man of great accomplishment. Yes, he can speak about his firsts, and much more.

He is the first African American to serve in Congress from his hometown of Cleveland, as one of the two famous Stokes brothers--his brother, Carl, the first African American mayor. There is something about the way those men were raised and showed themselves in public life. But it is Rep. Stokes' career in Congress that stands out for me.

I am not certain there has ever been a more distinguished Member of this body. It looks as if when they were trying to ask somebody to do something hard, they looked to Louis Stokes.

He was the first African American to serve on the Appropriations Committee. My heavens. And then look at the committees he has chaired--hard ones--the Ethics Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Then they needed someone to do something else that was difficult, and that was to serve on the Iran Contra Committee, and House Select Committee on Assassinations, nothing was more difficult than that.

If you were looking for a Member whom the public would trust and who this body would trust, who do you go to? They went to Louis Stokes. So if you are trying to find out how to serve, recall the life of Representative Louis Stokes.

In the District, we recall his life and his work. Much of his work was done in the field of health. The Howard University Louis Stokes Health Science Library is named for him here in the District of Columbia at Howard University. So we will never forget him.

Of the three, the one I knew best, of course, was my colleague and friend in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later a client of sorts, and then finally--for 25 years, a constituent.

I met Julian several years after he founded, along with a handful of other students, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. You have got to understand that that group was as different from any student group since. They were not an offshoot of the civil rights movement. They were a group that stood on its own.

I would go down in the summers. I was in law school. SNCC was the equivalent of major civil rights organizations, every single one, right alongside them. That is why John Lewis got to speak on the March on Washington.

The reason that SNCC stood out is the quality of its leadership in those early years. Julian became the spokesman. The reason he was the spokesman was his way with words. He was a poet and a writer, and he could explain what we were doing.

He served a most valuable role in these early years. So no one should be surprised that he went after the zenith of the civil rights movement to serve in the Georgia House of Representatives. What you may be surprised to learn is that when he moved on to the senate, the Georgia Senate, they refused to seat him because he had endorsed a SNCC statement opposing the Vietnam war. Imagine denying a seat to a member duly elected because of a statement he had made on an issue of great moment.

This case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court. At that point, I was a constitutional lawyer working for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. I got to write the amicus brief. We took very few amicus briefs to the Supreme Court, but this one seemed to have the makings of a landmark case. Indeed, it did become a landmark case. You do not see anybody denying anyone else the right to sit in his seat--or her seat, today--because of that person's views. The Julian Bond case settled the matter.

What was Julian Bond to do with the rest of his life? First of all, SNCC broke a fair number of people. And though they gave much to the movement, you may not have heard about many of them since. What Julian did was to give the rest of his life to the movement. For every single day of his life as a man, after he left public service in the Georgia Legislature, he was devoted to the civil rights movement he had entered as a very young man.

He moved to the District of Columbia with his wife, taught at American University and the University of Virginia, and became--and this is a matter that makes me chuckle--became the chairman of the NAACP.

At SNCC we thought the NAACP was way too conservative for us, the young and foolish. It tells you how Julian grew. He grew to be the long-time and devoted chairman of the NAACP.

He carried out his devotion to civil rights magnificently. Throughout his entire life, he remained a major spokesman for the civil rights movement and for progressive causes, his entire life speaking all around the country, carrying the message.

When he moved here, I had a Black Caucus event with Julian and with John Lewis simply discussing their lives as young men in the civil rights movement. That was to be one of the most memorable moments since I have been in Congress.

Just last February, during Black History Month, I asked Julian to come to Howard University, where he and I engaged in an intergenerational conversation with Howard students about the police shootings in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City and what they meant to this generation and how this generation had to have its own issues and move in its own direction.

One of the things we indicated was that for all of the work of the youth of the civil rights movement of our day, we never touched racial profiling. It remained alive and kicking for a new generation, which has taken it on.

I am, finally, particularly grateful that when Julian moved to the District of Columbia, he really became a part of this city, lending his civil rights celebrity to the great cause of this city for full citizenship, for D.C. voting rights, yes, and for statehood for thIe District of Columbia.

If you came into the District by taxis a few years ago, there was an advertisement. Julian was speaking in a cab, informing you that you were coming to the District of Columbia, where the residents were trying to get their full citizenship.

Wherever he was, he had a way of touching upon the issue of freedom of the day and of the people around him. I will always miss him. This country will always miss him. We are grateful for the life he led. We are grateful, especially, for this Congressional Black Caucus evening devoted to his life and to the lives of two others, very divergent lives but, in other ways, very similar.

I thank my good friend, Representative Jackson Lee, again, for her leadership here.

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