00:00Right after Reconstruction, we saw the first black person ever to walk on this floor.
00:05We saw a black senator elected to this body.
00:09Six people in black robes.
00:11They were wrong in Plessy v. Ferguson.
00:13They were wrong in Kuramatsu.
00:15We overcame them then, and we can overcome their now.
00:19The people united for the cause of freedom.
00:23This week, not many hours from now, we're going to celebrate Juneteenth.
00:30We all know the story of Juneteenth, that there were slaves in Texas that had not gotten the word that
00:35they were free.
00:37A civil war that cost so much blood and treasure to this country.
00:41No other war has seen so many Americans dead.
00:45And yet, at the end of that war, many, many people had not heard the Emancipation Proclamation, did not know
00:52they were free.
00:53It wasn't until that fateful day on Juneteenth that slaves, now free people in Texas, heard about their freedom.
01:04There was jubilation.
01:05There was celebration.
01:07And the tradition of Juneteenth started.
01:10Now, I'm very familiar.
01:11It's hard for me to walk on this Senate floor, this sacred civic space.
01:17It's hard for me to walk here and not recognize the history.
01:22Right after Reconstruction, we saw the first black person ever to walk on this floor.
01:27We saw a black senator elected to this body.
01:34Not popularly elected, but back then we put our legislators in the Senate by votes of state legislatures.
01:42We saw House members come from southern states as well, being elected in free, fair elections in that post-Reconstruction
01:52period.
01:53Because freedom in America is not just defined by not having chains.
01:58Freedom in America means being able to participate in this democracy.
02:02And in that brief period of the post-Reconstruction era, that brief period, excuse me, of the Reconstruction era, we
02:10saw free and open elections.
02:12African Americans rushed to the polls and voted at 70, 80 percent, and began to elect people in fair elections.
02:20We saw multicultural legislators.
02:24We saw blacks and whites and states sharing power.
02:28It was extraordinary, this brief window of time.
02:32But then the Reconstruction period ended.
02:36And a reign of terror fell throughout the South.
02:40We saw black elected officials, black judges, black mayors being dragged out of their offices, beat, and some of them
02:48lynched.
02:48We saw laws being passed by state legislatures to bar black people from voting, to put on poll taxes and
02:56other extraordinary hurdles to stop African American participation and African American voting.
03:01That very idea of being free was now undermined and undercut by a set of unfair laws.
03:09And what happened to blacks in the Senate?
03:11What happened to blacks in the House of Representatives?
03:14Well, they disappeared.
03:19I know the last speech, I've read it before, by George Henry White.
03:23The last black person in 1901 gave the final speech, and he predicted that one day African Americans would return
03:31to our federal legislature,
03:32would return to the House of Representatives, would return to the state.
03:36It's called the Phoenix speech, because he predicted that one day blacks would return to these bodies.
03:42One day elections would be free.
03:44One day we would reclaim our democracy of one person and one vote.
03:501901, and he was from North Carolina.
03:52And it wouldn't be until the 1990s that another black person would come to be elected from North Carolina.
04:01From those days in the 1870s and 1880s, when that reign of terror and the denial of vote,
04:08it wasn't until the 1960s that laws were secured, passed through the United States Senate and the United States House,
04:17that gave the right to vote a more fair and equal chance.
04:22It was called the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this extraordinary piece of legislation that secured the right to vote
04:30for African Americans.
04:31And finally, African Americans started returning to our legislature.
04:36We saw Edmund Brooke get elected to the United States Senate.
04:39We saw Carolyn Moseley Braun be elected to the United States Senate.
04:43The third person was Barack Obama, elected to the United States Senate, and I was the number four.
04:49Fourth black person in history to be elected to this body, after this history of horror and struggle and pain,
04:58after girls were killed in a bombing, the Edmund Pettus Bridge marchers beaten on Bloody Sunday,
05:05Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner being killed in Mississippi.
05:09The stories of horror of those folks who tried to stand up for the right to vote,
05:14tried to fight to advance the cause of equal voting.
05:18Finally, in 1965, Voting Rights Act was passed.
05:25Equality at the polling place, justice returned.
05:29And this body and the chamber across the Capitol began to see, as was predicted by George Henry White,
05:37Blacks come back to Congress, justice, fairness, equality, secured by this chamber, secured by Congress, signed by a president.
05:54The Voting Rights Act from 1965 held strong and allowed that fairness to be seen and allowed voters to have
06:02a fair say.
06:03But here, as we get ready to celebrate Juneteenth and those ideals of freedom,
06:08I have to stand here on the Senate floor, recount this history, and say that we are at another crisis
06:14point in our democracy,
06:15because the Supreme Court now has gutted the Voting Rights Act.
06:21That eviscerated Section 2.
06:24And what's happened as a result?
06:26Before the ink was dry, we saw Southern states, those same states that a century before,
06:34use the legislative power at the state level to eviscerate Black voting fairness.
06:39They raced really quickly to draw congressional lines on their maps with the express purpose of diluting African-American voting
06:50power.
06:52Literally eliminating districts where African-Americans had fair representation in order to stop them from having a voice in Congress.
07:06Here we're celebrating Juneteenth, but there's an irony, a painful, bittersweet truth that's being told,
07:13that right now we are seeing legislature after legislature in the very states that made up the former Confederacy
07:19moving with all deliberate speed to try to stop African-Americans from having a fair say, a fair voice, equal
07:31rights in voting.
07:32And the consequence of that is already being seen.
07:39Just like George Henry White, who knew he would not last one more election cycle,
07:45I see colleagues now who know that their districts have been diced up with intentionality
07:53in order to stop their voters from having a representative in Congress.
08:00What did our ancestors struggle for?
08:04What did generations who swore an oath to this flag, that this would be a nation of liberty and justice
08:09for all,
08:10what are those people who died in the movement?
08:13What are those folks who struggled and sacrificed?
08:16What are those folks who literally watched, finally, fairness and equality coming to maps in the South?
08:23What are they to say now?
08:25I can't stand on this floor as one of the few, still only handful of African-Americans ever to serve
08:32in this body
08:33without knowing upon whose shoulders I stand, the debt that I owe, the price that they paid,
08:43so that we should have a federal government that is truly of the people, for the people, and by the
08:50people.
08:51We know our history is full of dirty tricks and unfair gains that were played to stop some people from
08:59voting,
09:00so that even though those folks made up majorities in their communities, they would have no say in Congress.
09:07It is a bitter, ugly, wretched history that we have overcame.
09:12It speaks to the greatness of our nation that we have overcome.
09:16It speaks to the mightiness of a rainbow coalition of Americans, black folks and white folks,
09:22people from all backgrounds who joined arms and sang songs and marched towards freedom
09:28that helped this country to evolve and to grow into a more perfect union.
09:32And here we are on the eve of Juneteenth, and we see not a stride forward, but a stride back,
09:41but a set back,
09:42but our democracy being knocked down again by people who do not believe in the ideals of a democracy,
09:50of fair voting, fair maps, fair representation.
09:54But I'm here to tell you right now that progress is not always linear,
10:01that we are not in a nation that always, always marches forward.
10:08We've seen setbacks before.
10:12We've seen challenges, pains, and sorrows.
10:17What I'm here to tell you is that this most recent dark chapter that is ongoing right now will come
10:25to an end.
10:25I'm here to tell you that weeping may endure through the night, but joy cometh in the morning.
10:30I'm here to tell you that we may have a setback, we may have a falling down, but this is
10:36not a failure,
10:38this is not final, we will fight.
10:40But, and I'm not talking about physical contest, I'm talking about what makes democracy thrive,
10:46when it is we stand up and organize, we stand up and mobilize, we stand up and make sure that
10:54our voices are heard.
10:55On this Juneteenth, we need to recommit ourselves, like our ancestors did,
11:00to the highest ideals of our democracy, which is freedom and liberty.
11:04And how are these rights secured upon our nation?
11:07It's by people in this country standing up and securing those rights through action.
11:13We are not a nation whose story is powerful people preying upon the powerless.
11:20We are a nation that has shown that the people hold the power,
11:24and that the power of the people is greater than the people in power.
11:28Six people in black robes, they were wrong in Plessy v. Ferguson.
11:32They were wrong in Kuramatsu.
11:34We overcame them then, and we can overcome their now.
11:38The people united for the cause of freedom is the great story of America,
11:44and it's time that our generation, benefiting from the fruits of liberty,
11:48from the toiling hands of those in the past,
11:51it's time for our generation to earn the right of democracy
11:54by sweating for it and struggling for it now.
11:58This Juneteenth, let us cry freedom again, but not with our mouths.
12:02Let's do it with our sleeves rolled up, ready to organize and mobilize in the days to come,
12:09because this next election is not right or left, it's right or wrong.
12:14So that we can elect people to this body and the other that will restore voting rights,
12:19that will restore voting freedom, that will restore the ideals of fairness.
12:24That is the end, that is the aim, and that's how we overcome again.
12:30That is how we, as a people, secure liberty and justice for all.
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