And Still I Rise: Conscience Agenda

Floor Speech

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Mr. GREEN of Texas. And still I rise, Mr. Speaker.

Still I rise. Borrowing the words of Maya Angelou, ``Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave,'' and still I rise.

I rise as a scion of the enslaved Africans who were sacrificed to make America great, sacrificed for some 200-plus years, 240-plus years, to make America great.

I rise because I understand that as a scion and as a descendant, I have a duty, a responsibility, and an obligation to those enslaved people.

I think my colleague, John Lewis, put it best, to just have a responsibility to ``get in good trouble.'' ``Good trouble'' was his term. I added the verbiage.

We have this duty and responsibility to get into good trouble, to do that which is appropriate to honor the enslaved people who are the foundational mothers and fathers, the economic foundational mothers and fathers, of this country. The foundation upon which this economy resides to this day was put in place with sacrificed lives, millions of sacrificed lives, millions, literally, over centuries, literally, to make America the great country it is.

Unfortunately, America--the country I love, the country where I sing the national anthem, salute the flag, and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I stand for the national anthem. The country I love has not shown respect for the people who gave it its economic foundation.

As a matter of fact, we have shown disrespect for them, disrespect. They have not been honored. They have been pushed aside and left behind. As a matter of fact, there has been an effort to cause people to literally be ashamed of talking about these foundational mothers and fathers.

We revere the enslavers, and we revile the enslaved who were sacrificed, whose lives were sacrificed, many of whom were born into slavery, lived their lives as slaves, and died as slaves. We don't honor them appropriately.

Some of that is changing because of what the Honorable John Lewis called to our attention about good trouble. Some of that is changing because, last year, this Congress passed legislation for Slavery Remembrance Day. We did so on July 27 of last year.

Mr. Speaker, Slavery Remembrance Day was a historic and monumental accomplishment for Congress, but you didn't read about it in the newspapers. You didn't see it on television. You didn't hear anything about it on radio. It wasn't celebrated on social media.

This country does not respect the enslaved people, the country I love, the country where I salute the flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and stand for the national anthem.

None of that was broadcast because there is a desire among many to have those who are the scions, the descendants, forget slavery, to forgive and forget.

It is obvious that the scions have forgiven.

Yes, we forgive, but God gave us memory for a reason. We don't forget. We don't forget Pearl Harbor, and we have a Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. We don't forget 9/11, and we have a 9/11 Remembrance Day. We are not going to forget and should never forget the Holocaust, and we have a Holocaust Remembrance Day.

We don't forgive and forget. We should forgive and remember. Forgive and remember is what we do for 9/11 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7. That is what we do for the Holocaust. We remember, and we should.

I stand here a scion, a proud person who commemorates Slavery Remembrance Day. It is not a day for celebration. It is a day for commemoration. As we are approaching the next Slavery Remembrance Day, I thought it would be appropriate to do several things.

The first is to acknowledge Mr. Steny Hoyer. Mr. Steny Hoyer gave me his word, and he kept his word. He gave me his word. He indicated that we would pass Slavery Remembrance Day legislation in this House, and we did. We did it, as I indicated, on July 27, 2022.

I am eternally grateful to Mr. Hoyer for what he committed to do, for what he followed through on, and, in fact, what he did. So, I thank Mr. Hoyer. I will forever appreciate him for this and many other things that he did as the majority leader. I respect greatly the many things that he has done, but I don't respect any of them more than what he did to help us inculcate Slavery Remembrance Day into the national fiber and fabric of this country.

I greatly appreciate it, and I will be thanking the gentleman not only today but also in Houston, Texas, on August 19, when we will have our second annual Slavery Remembrance Day event.

The second event will be on August 19 in Houston, Texas. Our speaker will be the Honorable Bishop Barber, who is well known for his oratory and his intellect. He is a preacher par excellence, a pulpiteer par excellence, and a person who, without question, is making a difference in the lives of poor people. He is engaged in a campaign to help poor people.

It is August 19 in Houston, Texas. It will be open to the public, I might add, the first 1,000 people. Last year, we had 1,000 people in attendance. We expect to have 1,000 people this year.

We expect to continue with the Slavery Remembrance Day event not only in Houston but across the length and breadth of this country.

There are other scions who understand that they are bringing the gifts our ancestors gave, that they are the dream and hope of the slaves. Some of them will pick this up, and they, too, will have Slavery Remembrance Day events.

The actual day for Slavery Remembrance Day to have the most commemoration is going to be August 20 because it was on August 20, 1619, that the ship White Lion docked at a place called Point Comfort near what we now call Norfolk, Virginia. When the White Lion docked, it had 20 or so--I am not sure of the exact number--persons of African ancestry who were traded for goods. They became the first Africans to become enslaved in the Colonies.

I understand that there are other circumstances that predate August 20, 1619, but this happened with the Colonies, and it was the Colonies that, in a sense--they probably don't like to say it, but it is true-- popularized slavery. They popularized it, legitimized it, made it comfortable, made it acceptable, made it part of the vernacular, and made it a part of everyday life. It was the American Colonies that gave us slavery as an institution in this country for hundreds of years.

On August 20, we will be commemorating Slavery Remembrance Day. We have this breakfast and ceremony on the 19th, but on the 20th, we will take it to houses of worship. In these places of worship, we will have commemoration ceremonies.

Last year, we were at Bishop Dixon's Community of Faith Church, to be called the cathedral now, the Cathedral of Faith in Houston, Texas. We will have another commemoration ceremony there.

We will have commemoration ceremonies in other churches. We want to have them across the length and breadth of the country. We will get there. It is not going to be easy, but we will do it.

This is what you do, Mr. Speaker. This is, for many people, trouble, but it is the kind of good trouble that John Lewis called to our attention. It is good trouble.

I remember how he and I were in good trouble together. We were arrested multiple times together, and we literally were in jail together. I respect and will always allow his spirit to manifest itself such that it can be a guiding light and force in the lives of people and hopefully will continue to be one in my life, the desire to be in good trouble.

I have followed through on this good trouble mission, and I have had the opportunity to make good trouble in honor of the Honorable John Lewis as it relates to voting rights. This is a part of the process of honoring the enslaved people, as a matter of fact, this good trouble. Honoring them by getting in good trouble to advance the rights of all people, which would include them--voting rights, for example--is an act of good trouble not just for my contemporaries and for the people who will benefit from it now but to show that we respect that the ancestors suffered and never had the right to vote.

They suffered, so someone such as an Al Green who makes it to Congress, they would expect that he would try to make a difference and get and acquire the rights for others that they never had.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to tell you that I was before the Supreme Court a few years back. I was before the Supreme Court, and I have the proof of it here. This is the citation that I received on August 9, 2021. August is a significant month, you see, Mr. Speaker, in my life.

We were arrested there, and I made a commitment after we were arrested--not put in jail; it wasn't that type of arrest. This time, when I was arrested, they placed this band on us, and this was something to indicate that we have been arrested and had to post bail. I paid a fine, and I did not go to a place of incarceration.

My commitment was to wear this band. This is the same band that was placed on me on August 9, 2021. It is the same band. I committed to myself to wear this until we passed the Voting Rights Act here in Congress, and I have had many tell me that I may be wearing it a long time. I have been wearing it now for some years, you see, Mr. Speaker, but I don't think that I can wear it too long because the right to vote has been denied to people for too long.

As a scion of the enslaved people who never had the right to vote, this is the least I can do to show the world that I am serious to the extent that one can do so with a wristband, a wristband that symbolizes a commitment to justice for all in the form of voting rights being protected for all.

I want to assure people that we will continue with this conscience agenda. This Slavery Remembrance Day is but one aspect of the conscience agenda. The conscience agenda, which is to my left, is one that we are going to promote, and it is a part of the legislative agenda here in Congress. That legislative agenda will be talked about on August 19 in Houston, Texas, when we have 1,000 or more people in attendance at this event, the Slavery Remembrance Day breakfast.

We are going to talk about the legislative agenda. The legislative agenda includes expanding Slavery Remembrance Day. We will expand it across the length and breadth of the country, as I articulated a little bit earlier.

The legislative agenda will include awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to the enslaved. We have in 1956, here in this Congress, accorded a Congressional Gold Medal; 1956, a Congressional Gold Medal, to Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers, for edification purposes, are the people who fought to maintain slavery.

The Congress of the United States awarded a Congressional Gold Medal to the enslavers but not to the enslaved, not to the people who are the foundational mothers and fathers of this country, the people who suffered and who were sacrificed, their lives sacrificed so that we would have this opportunity to stand in the well of the House and say America is a great country. It is. But it is great for a reason. The reason is sacrificed lives, millions of them.

If we in this Congress can accord a Congressional Gold Medal to Confederate soldiers, surely we can accord a Congressional Gold Medal to the enslaved people whose lives were sacrificed to lay the economic foundation upon which this Nation resides today.

A Congressional Gold Medal is a part of the conscience agenda. You will note we have that at the top of this display; conscience agenda. This is our moral imperative. This is our moral imperative, this conscious agenda; our moral imperative.

That means it is something that we have to do because it is not only the right thing to do; this is the righteous thing to do. This is a righteous movement. This is righteous legislation.

This is not your typical legislation. This is legislation that addresses a similar moment in time that changed the rest of time in this country, and that moment in time was August 20, 1619.

It changed the history of this country forever in an unpleasant way for a good many people, I might add, people of color.

This is a part of it, awarding a Congressional Gold Medal. We have legislation that we have filed in the House of Representatives to accord a Congressional Gold Medal to the enslaved people.

The next piece of legislation on the conscience agenda, that inner thing within us all that says this is the right thing to do, that we should respond to. This is the response. This is the response from a scion of the African people who were enslaved and sacrificed to make America great.

The next item on the agenda for those who may not be aware--many are; the message is getting out--is the removal of Richard Russell's name from the Russell Senate Office Building.

Pardon me while I pick up my poster on this issue. This is a poster that displays, depicts the Russell Senate Office Building; a building paid for with tax dollars.

Not only is it paid for with tax dollars, it is maintained as the same with tax dollars, the Russell Senate Office Building.

Richard Russell was a bigot. I am speaking truth. Richard Russell was a racist, a White supremacist. Richard Russell was one of the authors of the Southern Manifesto.

Richard Russell fought antilynching legislation. Richard Russell fought civil rights legislation. Richard Russell has earned a place in infamy, and his name should not be associated with the Russell Senate Office Building. It should not. His name should be immediately removed from the building.

The building itself is a symbol of national shame. I don't go in the Richard Russell Office Building. I am a one-person protest. I don't go. I respect myself enough not to go into this building.

I guarantee you; if this building were symbolic of some other things associated with Anglo Americans, they wouldn't go in it. They respect themselves enough not to disrespect themselves by going into a building that was antithetical to their best interests, that had the name of some person who was antithetical to their best interests. That is what they do.

I am not doing anything that my Anglo-American friends wouldn't do if the shoe were on the other foot, to borrow a phrase.

Unfortunately, the Senate has not found it within its wisdom to change the name. I have heard that the reason the name has not been changed is because they can't agree on another name. There have been efforts to try to do it, but they couldn't agree on a name.

I have a solution. There is a way to resolve this question of the name change. We resolve it by doing this: Let it revert to the name that it had prior to becoming the Russell Senate Office Building.

That name was the Old Senate Office Building. Let it revert to the Old Senate Office Building; take such time as needed to select the new name.

I have no name that I am recommending. I am not doing this to give it a name. I am doing this to have this name removed.

I am doing this because this is good trouble. This is the kind of trouble that the ancestors expect a scion to engage in. This is the good trouble, the kind of trouble that John Lewis engaged in when he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. This is good trouble. I don't mind getting into good trouble.

It is good trouble to say that the Senate ought to be ashamed for allowing this to persist, knowing that it is an affront to African Americans.

They know it, but we are not that important. Our vote is, but we are not that important. They don't have to respond to us immediately. Take their time.

It is a very difficult circumstance to negotiate when people who are not directly impacted by something that is an affront to others, when they have the authority to set the timeline, when they can determine when it is best to do that which is going to benefit people who are finding a circumstance unpleasant and unacceptable. They don't have to rush. It doesn't impact them; many of them. It does impact one or two who are there, in the sense that they are descendants.

I am a proud descendant. I am not ashamed to say that the Senate ought to be ashamed for what it is doing in allowing this to continue.

It just seems like in this country where we get exposure for everything that is under the Sun, that this would get the kind of attention it merits.

The press knows, they do, but they are not taking any action. Sometimes the press can be there to maintain the status quo. I have no idea as to why, but that is what is happening as a result of the inaction.

The status quo is being maintained, and we need not kid ourselves. If this received the media attention that it richly deserves and will not receive, apparently, this would change. It would. The name would come off of the building. The Senate has shame on its face for allowing this to persist.

The conscience agenda. Another aspect of this agenda is the enacting of the securities and exchange atonement.

Let me explain. I was afforded the preeminent privilege of being the chairperson of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the full committee of Financial Services, and as such, we held hearings.

We held a hearing, and we had some of the top banks in this country present. We made inquiries about their association with slavery by and through their predecessor institutions.

Well, confessions were made. Predecessor institutions are big banks. Before they became as big as they are now, they engaged with slavery. Banks were lending money so that people could buy human beings and shackle and chain them into slavery.

Banks would repossess their property. They were chattel by definition at the time, human beings as chattel. These are the foundational mothers and fathers of this country in chains.

They were repossessed. If the person who received the loan to purchase the slaves didn't make his payments timely, the slaves were repossessed, just as you would repossess an automobile or a car, some piece of property, an inanimate object. They were repossessed.

These are the captains of industry. These are the people who make millions of dollars a year. The question was posed to them: Have you done enough to atone? Not in those exact words. They all gave an indication that they could do more.

Then the question was asked, well, can you give us a plan for doing that something more? Not one had a plan or was prepared to say they would even present a plan.

The insurance companies, big insurance companies got their start, some of them, dealing in slavery. That wasn't the only thing, but it was a part of their portfolio at the time.

These big companies insured the slaves. When a slave died, then there was a payment of funds, just as you would insure a cow and some other animal; human beings treated with less respect than you would give a cow, in many cases.

The enslaved people, the foundational mothers and fathers, the economic foundational mothers and fathers who laid the foundation such that I can stand here and say America is a great country; great because of their lives that were sacrificed.

I say it sincerely. America is a great country. But we have to add: because of the ancestors who were enslaved for centuries so that America could have the free labor to help it become the economic powerhouse it is today.

We need to have a means by which we can find out just to what extent all of these companies, major companies, engaged in some way with slavery, and there should be atonement.

We didn't demand that they atone in some specific way. The specificities we allowed them to negotiate within themselves, but so far, we have not had any action that I am aware of.

To do something along the lines of just a few handouts here and a few handouts there, and receiving applause while you are getting your millions and millions of dollars as a salary, that is not enough. That is not enough. I can call some names of people who think that they have done great things while receiving those big salaries and done very little to atone for what their predecessor institutions have done. ``Securities and Exchange Commission''--securities and exchange atonement, more appropriately stated.

Finally, on this agenda, which we will talk about on August 19 in Houston, Texas, with 1,000 people assembled, we will talk about all of these and one additional--this is the good trouble that you get into when you are a scion and you respect yourself--establishing the department of reconciliation, establishing the department of reconciliation.

It is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that we have not atoned. We have not. Not only is atonement less than appreciated, but we are finding now that, in my opinion, we are backsliding in the House of Representatives--backsliding, moving back, moving backward in the House of Representatives.

We are very close in this House to having racism legitimized as a talking point or the verbiage associated with racism legitimized as a talking point.

Case in point, yesterday, a Member of the House of Representatives came to this floor and uttered what I consider a racial slur on the floor of the House. There was an appeal to take down the words, to have them stricken, right here on the floor of the House of Representatives.

We are becoming more comfortable in this country with racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, nativism, sexism, all of these invidious ``isms.'' We are becoming more comfortable with them.

There are people who are very comfortable with them who are Members of the Congress of the United States of America. We had a President who was very comfortable with these invidious phobias and ``isms.'' That, my friends, laid the foundation for much of what we are seeing and suffering to this very day.

The behavior of the person at the top will set the tone and tenor for persons up and down the line. We are suffering because of the behavior of someone that we elected to public office. We in this country are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to the progress that we should be making in terms of relationship building and living together in harmony.

A lot of the legislation in the NDAA evidences exactly what I am saying. By the way, I voted against it.

This department of reconciliation is needed. It is needed because, for too long, we have ignored the chasm between the races in this country, and there is a chasm. We have ignored it. Rather than span the chasm, build a bridge such that we can all enjoy liberty and justice for all, we ignored it. We have somehow hoped that it would just go away, that if we could just let time pass, it would go away.

However, the passage of time in and of itself does not cause pain, hurt, and sorrow to evaporate. It is what you do with the time, and we have not used our time wisely, as evidenced by the fact that we had all this celebration of those who were the enslavers and literally ignoring those who were enslaved--vilified the enslaved. We need a department of reconciliation.

This department would be--something just came to mind. Let's pause on the department of reconciliation and what it would be because I have another thought.

I really think that I need to amend the agenda. In honor of the Honorable John Lewis, I need to call this the ``good trouble'' because for a lot of people, this is trouble, see? They can't stomach what we have here, the good trouble conscience agenda. I am going to do that, the good trouble conscience agenda, because I understand the trouble that this creates in the lives of people who want to forget and go on.

However, they don't do that when it comes to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or the Holocaust. We have to remember those things, and we should. But when it comes to slavery, let's just forget that. Let's not talk about it. Forgive and forget, Al, but remember the others. Just forgive and forget the people who made America the great country it is, the foundational mothers and fathers.

As I was saying, back to our regularly scheduled program, establishing a department of reconciliation, here is what this department would do, what it would allow us to do: To have a secretary of reconciliation, just as we have a Secretary of Commerce, just as we have a Secretary of Education, just as we have a Secretary of Labor, a secretary whose job it would be to wake up every morning with conciliation, reconciliation, on his or her mind.

That secretary would have undersecretaries, just as we have Undersecretaries in the Department of Labor, Department of Commerce, Department of Education, undersecretaries who would have various aspects of reconciliation to deal with.

Reconciliation would be broader than the enslaved people. Reconciliation would also include others with whom we have not reconciled.

We need to reconcile. We have not reconciled. It is bigger than the enslaved people, the foundational mothers and fathers, the economic foundational mothers and fathers who have made America great. It is bigger than this. There are others. This is what the department of reconciliation would be charged with helping us resolve.

It is not going to be resolved over a year or two or the term of one President. It is not going to be resolved in a few years, one decade. It is not. It is going to take time. Just as we are committed to labor issues with a Department and a Secretary who report directly to the President, we could be committed to reconciliation with a department and a secretary that reports directly to the President.

The Department of Labor is not going anywhere. Labor issues are going to be available to be addressed, and this department will address these issues. The same with education and commerce. We have these departments.

When we have specific needs, we develop specific solutions. The needs of labor are addressed through the Department of Labor. The need to reconciliate should be addressed through a department of reconciliation. We need a department of reconciliation to address the needs of this country so that we can live together in harmony and better understand each other.

An example of something that we need to better understand: In this country, Fort Bragg existed for many years. Bragg was the name of a Confederate officer--a Confederate officer, Bragg. We changed it to Fort Liberty. I thought that was something that we should celebrate and appreciate, but now there is a movement afoot. At least one person who is running for President has connoted that, should he become President, the name will revert back to Fort Bragg.

This is what we are experiencing across the length and breadth of the country, a rolling back. Remember, I said that we are moving in the wrong direction. We are experiencing a rolling back of gains that were fought for, won, and earned, many of them with the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of people. There is a good possibility that if a certain person becomes President, the name of Fort Bragg will be reinstated on what we now call Fort Liberty.

We are moving in the wrong direction, but we are going to persist with the conscience agenda. We are going to give people the opportunity to do the righteous thing. It would be within them to make a decision as to whether the righteous thing is the appropriate thing to do. There is nothing about this agenda that is not right. Slavery Remembrance Day--we have Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 9/11 remembrance, Holocaust remembrance.

Nothing in the world like the Holocaust, a horrific event. Slavery remembrance, nothing in the world like it. Slavery was a horrific event, a crime against humanity, in fact. That is a righteous agenda item, a good trouble agenda item.

A Congressional Gold Medal is righteous. If we can do it for Confederate soldiers in 1956, we can do it for the enslaved people today if we chose to. That is a part of our righteous agenda.

Removing Richard Russell's name--a person who fought civil rights, fought antilynching laws, coauthored the ``Southern Manifesto''--that is a righteous thing to do. Not just the right thing, Senate, who ought to be ashamed, who won't do the righteous thing. That is the righteous thing to do. Senate leadership who won't do the righteous thing.

Enacting the securities and exchange atonement. We need to know about the affiliation association of these megacorporations with the institution of slavery, and there needs to be some atonement. The universe is constructed such that atonement is a part of the process of making wrong right, righting wrongs. We need atonement.

Of course, to do all of this, much of it, all of this could be issues taken up under a department of reconciliation. As I indicated earlier, and still I rise, I am truly a scion of the enslaved people who were sacrificed to make America great.

I am a good troublemaker in the spirit of John Lewis and many others. I want to be a good troublemaker. I will continue to be a good troublemaker.

And still I rise, bringing the gifts my ancestors gave. I am the dream--to paraphrase Maya Angelou, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

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