July 13, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 125 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E627]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING EMMA SANDERS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 13, 2020

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a 
remarkable leader, Emma Sanders.
  Known as one of the ``unofficial'' slate of Black Mississippians who 
sought to displace the nonrepresentative all-white delegation at the 
1964 Democratic National Convention, Emma Sanders became active force 
in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. She was one of the people 
who helped organize local citizens and some of the 700 or so young 
people from the North who flooded Mississippi to help Black citizens 
surmount Jim Crow-era barriers that had kept their voter registration 
at 7 percent of those eligible.
  She graduated from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now 
Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Miss., the nation's first Black 
land grant college, and studied toward a master's degree in business at 
Indiana University in Bloomington.
  Mrs. Sanders taught in Jefferson County, Miss., and in Jackson, and 
later served as the executive director of Hinds County community action 
programs. While working as an assistant to Representative Wayne Dowdy, 
a Mississippi Democrat, she played a role in the naming of the first 
federal building in the nation for a Black person, the Dr. A.H. McCoy 
Federal Building in Jackson, which honored a local dentist, insurance 
executive, and civic leader.
  Mrs. Sanders would live to witness great progress on civil rights, 
but one breakthrough that she had hoped for--the removal of the 
Confederate battle emblem from Mississippi's state flag--would not 
occur until four days after her death.
  Sanders, who was 91, died in her home on June 24, 2020.
  Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the late 
Emma Sanders for her dedication to the civil rights movement in the 
State of Mississippi.

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