The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Black History Month (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Richard J. Durbin was published in the Senate section on pages S757-S758 on Feb. 22.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Black History Month
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday would have been John Lewis's 81st birthday. That a fearless young man, who was threatened, jailed, beaten half to death so many times for the cause of love and justice, actually lived to reach the age of 80 seems like a miracle.
Now, as America celebrates our first Black History Month since his passing, we miss him, but we still have the moral force of his message. John made sure of that. Two days before he died, he wrote an essay for the New York Times. He asked the paper to print his words on the day of his funeral--of his ``homegoing,'' as he said. It was his last message to America.
In his essay John Lewis recalled how, when he was a little boy in Alabama, the threat of White supremacist violence and government-
sanctioned terror was a fact of everyday life.
He also remembered the moment that changed his life: hearing a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., on the radio. From Dr. King's sermons he learned about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He also learned that when we tolerate injustice, we are complicit.
When we see something that is wrong, he wrote, ``each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out.''
John Lewis spent the next 65 years on Earth following Dr. King's teachings. I never met anyone in my life so unshakably committed to nonviolence and the transformative power of love.
There was another person who inspired John Lewis to spend his life getting into what he called ``good trouble.'' He said he was inspired into the movement to end America's brutal history of race discrimination by the brutal death of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. When Emmett Till was brutally murdered for supposedly whistling at a White woman, he was only 14 years old. John Lewis was 15.
Emmett Till had traveled to Mississippi that summer to visit relatives from his home on the South Side of Chicago. When his body was returned to his grieving mother, Mamie Till, she made a decision that changed the world. She demanded that her son's coffin remain open at his funeral so that the world could see what hatred and racism had done to her only child.
Emmitt Till's murder and Mamie Till's courage launched the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. It was one of the greatest periods of racial reckoning in our Nation's history. Just 3 months later, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL, bus. She said that she thought of Emmett Till, and that courage covered her like a quilted blanket.
Earlier this month, the city of Chicago designated the home in which Emmett and Mamie Till lived as a city historical site. There are plans to preserve it as a museum.
Five years ago, the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture opened in Washington, DC. It represents America's first official attempt to tell the story of African Americans. But you don't have to go to a museum to see evidence of racial injustice in America or to see people bravely getting into ``good trouble'' for justice. You see that all around us.
Nine days before he died, weak from his chemo treatment, John Lewis made his last public appearance at the newly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in front of the White House. He explained the reason for his visit in his final letter to America. It begins with these words:
``While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society.''
Lewis went on: ``That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington. . . . I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.''
John Lewis drew a direct line from the civil rights movement to the Black Lives Matter protest of today, and he said: ``Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor.''
As we celebrate this month, we can see the ravages of racial injustice in this pandemic, which has hit our Black and Brown brothers and sisters with a disproportionate ferocity. African Americans still live sicker and die younger in America. The average Black family still possesses only a fraction of the wealth of White families, even after a lifetime of backbreaking work. African Americans still face voter suppression and intimidation a half-century after John Lewis fought for voting rights.
Just weeks ago, White nationalists helped lead an armed insurrection against our democracy, and a man in that mob paraded a Confederate battle flag through the halls of this Capitol. We have work to do.
Truly, we have things to celebrate. Black history in America is a record of brutal subjugation, racial violence, and discrimination, but it is also the story of resilient people who survived those horrors and created a rich and vibrant culture. From Crispus Attucks, the first American who gave his life in the Revolutionary War, to Officer Eugene Goodman, one of the heroes in the January 6 insurrection; from Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman to Vice President Kamala Harris; from the enslaved people who built this Capitol and the White House to Barack Obama, our first Black President; from John Lewis, the youngest speaker at the March on Washington, to Amanda Gordon, the youngest inaugural poet in our Nation's history, African Americans have enriched America in every field of thought and every walk of life and made us freer, more prosperous, and truer to our founding promises. I celebrate Black History Month.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa
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