CELEBRATING AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I am pleased to join in commemorating African-American History Month and in recognizing a crucial part of our diversity: the vast history and legacy that African Americans have contributed to the founding and building of our Nation.
In 1915, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which shortly after its creation, began a campaign to establish Negro History Week. In 1926, the second week of February was chosen to recognize the contributions of African Americans to American society. In 1976, this week of observance was expanded to a month and became African-American History Month.
Each year, the Association, now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, designates a theme for the Black History Month observance. This year's theme, "Before Brown, Beyond Boundaries, Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" marks one of the most seminal moments in the fight for equal rights in this country-the Supreme Court's May 15, 1954 ruling that "[i]n the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."
It was a ruling that was met with violent resistance and created enormous upheaval. A number of States adopted policies of "massive resistance" seeking to avert compliance with the Court's decision. Many went so far as to adopt resolutions calling for the State Government to interpose itself, parens patriae, between its citizens and the Federal government's efforts to impose desegregation.
But in the years that followed Brown, inspired by the framework for progress that the Court had provided, our civil rights leaders and the movement they created never backed down. They instead redoubled their heroic efforts often in the face of great risk of personal harm.
From the refusal by Rosa Parks to move to the back of a public bus, which ignited the Montgomery bus boycott, to efforts of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others to secure civil rights and desegregate public facilities, to efforts of the NAACP to clarify and expand the First amendment's protections related to free association, Brown's effects were felt across the Nation and beyond the sphere of public education.
And, of course, Thurgood Marshall-who I should note was born in Baltimore and attended Frederick Douglass High School-was at the center of these efforts. After graduating at the top of his class at Howard Law School, Marshall came back to Baltimore and, after working with NAACP to accomplish the landmark result in Brown led the legal fight thereafter to extend its precedent throughout the civil rights arena. After leaving the NAACP, Marshall put his convictions, determination, and legal prowess to work as a Federal judge, then Solicitor General, and ultimately the first African-American Justice on the Supreme Court. There, he was, as Justice William Brennan remembered him, the "voice of authority . . . the voice of reason . . . [a]nd a voice with an unwavering message: that the Constitution's protections must not be denied to anyone and that the Court must give its constitutional doctrine the scope and sensitivity needed to assure that result."
At the beginning of the last century, our Nation was a vastly different place than it is today. The country was divided along racial lines and racism was accepted and institutionalized. African Americans were not allowed to vote, and the opportunities available to African Americans were few.
Today, thanks to the visions of a few and the sacrifices of many-and in significant part thanks to the lasting effects of Brown-that situation has changed. After much hardship, African Americans have made great strides in many areas and now participate in every sector of our society. Throughout the past 100 years, African Americans have made remarkable contributions to the Nation and the world as mathematicians, scientists, novelists, poets, politicians, and members of the armed services.
Through the lessons and struggles of the last century and the trying first few years of this century, Americans have shown the world how people of all races, colors, religions and nationalities create the fabric of our Nation, a fabric that is richer because of our differences. This month, we honor the special contribution African Americans have made to that fabric.
But there is much work left to be done. When in 1981 the City of Baltimore unveiled a statue to Marshall, the Justice told the gathered crowd "I just want to be sure that when you see this statue, you won't think that's the end of it. I won't have it that way. There's too much to be done." So we take the occasion of African-American History Month to celebrate the steps that we have taken toward equality, but also to remind ourselves of how far we have to go.