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[Page H3883]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REALIZING AMERICA'S RACIST PAST
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Soto) for 5 minutes.
Mr. SOTO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of legislation we just
passed, the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys that
was sponsored by my fellow Floridian, Congresswoman Wilson.
Slavery lasted for over 246 years in America, from 1619 to 1865. It
is one of America's original sins. People think of the Civil War as
ancient history, but there are actually still even children of slaves
alive today. They may be in their late eighties, early nineties, but it
makes you realize it wasn't that long ago.
In the 13th through 15th Amendments, we saw a great change
prohibiting slavery, creating citizenship, due process, and the right
to vote for African Americans.
Then, you had the Reconstruction Era. It started out with promising
potential. Federal troops helped ensure votes throughout the Nation. We
elected African Americans to the House and Senate, and according to
Sherman's promise, everyone would get 40 acres and a mule.
It all came tumbling down, though, starting with the assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln, and President Johnson began to dismantle
Reconstruction. Then, President Hayes ended Reconstruction in 1877 as
part of a corrupt deal to ensure his Presidency.
Those in the South, African Americans, were arrested and put on chain
gangs, among other ways, to force them into indentured servitude. Those
in the North and West faced discrimination, discrimination in jobs,
housing, justice, education, healthcare, marriage. Even facilities
became segregated.
It reached a fevered pitch with ``The Birth of a Nation'' in 1915,
restarting the KKK and lynchings and renewed interest in the
Confederacy, its leaders, and its symbols. It played upon every
terrible stereotype of African-American men on the silver screen for an
impressionable public to see.
But it didn't stop there. Financial segregation was generationally
punishing. African-American troops fought in World War I and World War
II in segregated units for a country that discriminated against them.
Then, they came home and were shut out of the New Deal programs during
the Great Depression, shut out of VA student loans and home loans.
They missed out on the greatest expansion of the middle class during
the 1950s, and it was then that their renewed civil rights fight was
just beginning.
With the success of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of the
1960s, we saw some improvement, victories fought hard by John Lewis,
who we just lost.
Even with these advances, discrimination persisted in the systems of
justice, finance, business, and other foundations of our society.
Add in the 1980 war on drugs and the 1994 crime bill, and the list of
laws and rules to systematically break up Black families, especially
the arrest of Black men, reverberates today as our Nation looks inward
after the murder of George Floyd about our country's racist past and
institutional bias against Black men and boys, as well as Black women
and girls.
This is why the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and
Boys, as well as the Justice in Policing Act, are so important.
There must be an investigation, a realization, and reckoning in
America about the racist past of this country and generational theft.
We must develop lasting solutions if we are to progress as one Nation
where every American is created equal.
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