Kweisi Mfume

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about two things, one particularly of import and interest, because we are exiting what we have come to know in this country as Black History Month and the other more pertinent in terms of the current news and what is going on, particularly what has been going on over the last month and a half. I begin my remarks today by talking about this whole notion of history, why it is important, why nobody owns it, why it affects all of us as Americans, and why it is important to remember. In remembering, we tend not to make the same mistake again. As we officially end the month tomorrow, I wanted to take some time today to bring to the attention of the American public something that is not highlighted and very seldom ever talked about but very important because it was a grave injustice and a mark on our Nation's history. It is referred to as the Tulsa Race Massacre which occurred in the summer of 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I want to walk us back to that summer and those three nights when the affluent Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, often referred to then and now as Black Wall Street, was burned to the ground. It was totally burned to the ground, and 300 African-American people--men, women, and children--were murdered. It is hard to imagine that that happened in this country in just the last century, just a little over 100 years ago. It did, and the fact that it did, I think, speaks volumes about why it is so very important that we understand the deep hurt that took place and why we understand also it is really our responsibility to remember that and to make sure that we don't allow this Nation to creep down that dark kind of road again. That Tulsa Race Massacre, again, 300 people were murdered. It started with a man being falsely accused of sexual assault, a 19-year-old kid. On May 30, 1921, Sarah Page, a young White woman operating an elevator in the Drexel Building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, encountered him. He encountered her. Dick Rowland was the name of the 19-year-old Black kid. He was a shoeshine, a delivery boy, and worked in the Drexel Building. He was in that building at that time because they had a public ``colored'' restroom facility. He came there to relieve himself, as he normally did. While there, both Rowland and Page were both in an elevator. A clerk, ironically a White clerk, claimed to have heard a scream and called the police, telling them that this kid, this 19-year-old kid, Rowland, had sexually assaulted the young lady. The police chief, whose name was John Gustafson, reported that the young lady bore no scratches, no bruises, no disarranged dress. The young woman said: No, he never made a bad remark to me of any kind. This is public record. That should be enough to negate this false claim that someone just yelled out of the clear blue. Despite that, charges were brought against the 19-year-old kid, Mr. Roland. He was arrested and then taken to the Tulsa courthouse. Later that afternoon, newspapers ran inflammatory articles hot off the press that suggested that the 19-year-old kid, Rowland, had sexually assaulted the young lady, and they ran with a story that stirred emotions at that time. The story was: Headline. Headline. Read all about it. Young Negro nabbed for attacking girl in elevator. Even though the girl's testimony was: He never touched me. We never spoke. He got on the elevator. He got off. Even though there was no physical evidence to the contrary, that is what the newspaper ran at the time. Worried, as most of the residents were, that this kid was going to be lynched, approximately 300 men met at the courthouse, and an estimated 25 Black men also arrived at the scene to back up the sheriff who had sent out a plea for help. The sheriff wanted somebody there to protect the courthouse to ensure justice and to make sure that this kid he had had to take into custody was, in fact, safe. However, when the crowd of White men swelled to roughly 3,000 and the group of Black men swelled to about 75, a confrontation did not take place. There was a standoff at the courthouse, and the National Guard Armory in Tulsa opened its doors and allowed people to come in, citizens, to arm themselves. They just took whatever weapons they wanted. Then they dispersed. Now, if this sounds a little strange, it really, really is. This was 104 or so years ago. It is the sort of thing that in this month where we talk about Black history and American history, which are both intertwined, it is important to say to a lot of people that this really happened. I am not making it up. We have got court records. There are newspaper records. There are reports of all sorts by those who reported the news. This is an American fact. It is chilling. I mean, it is sad. It is very, very sad. I don't raise it today to make anybody feel bad. I just raise it to say that you can't simply close the books and act like things did not happen, call it DEI if somebody wants to talk about it, and pretend that something that did happen, that was gross and so antihuman--it is still repulsive to pretend that it did not happen. For someone just tuning in right now, these are the statistics from that day. Again, this community, Greenwood, was known as the Black Wall Street at the time. It was thriving with businesses and entrepreneurship and commerce. Eighty-five of the businesses in that town owned by the Black population were burned to the ground. One thousand of their homes were set on fire and burned to the ground. As I indicated in my opening remarks, 300 African Americans were killed that day and the next day, and there were 700 people injured, overflowing the hospitals, which in that day and time were challenged anyway. The total damage was estimated to be $1.5 million, but in today's dollars it is $32 million plus. What was left of the town? Just smoldering ashes. Again, it is important to talk about this, because this actually happened. For anybody thinking that Black History Month is just a celebration of all the great things that Africans Americans did or invented or their role in the arts or in sports or anything like that, it is. It is also about the shame of massacres in this country, the home of the free and the land of the brave, and how somehow we are just supposed to cover it over and never believe that it happened. There is importance in remembering. The importance is to remember so that it never happens again. As I indicated, there is this standoff. The sheriff has called for help. He believes that this mob of 300 White men are going to storm the small jail, take the 19-year-old kid, and lynch him. The National Guard, for some reason, opened its doors so citizens can run in and get weapons and arm themselves. We don't know who fired the first shot or what happened, but we do know that what was to happen would be the worst race massacre in American history. Gunfire broke out between the Greenwood men and the White mob, and at least 20 persons fell dead right there at that first volley. During the shoot-out--this is from published reports. This is not hearsay. During the shoot-out, White mobs prevented the ambulances from treating Black men and let them lay there and die. Around the city, racial violence ensued, including an unarmed Black man being chased into the Royal Theater and then murdered viciously on the stage. Greenwood men fled from the courthouse because they were outnumbered and because they were pursued by this crazy mob of enraged men. Most of the Black men made it back to their side of town, preparing to defend their community, their wives, their children, and their property, which caused rumors to circulate again, rumors that ginned up a response that was completely out of touch with reality. It was being said that there was a Negro uprising and, therefore, get ready to protect yourself and get ready at the same time to defend your property, even though the property was not under assault. It was the property of the Black citizens there. Throughout the night, they were engaged in gun battles at the Frisco tracks. Those were the tracks that separated Black Greenwood from the White sections of Tulsa. Interestingly, many of the Black men--and you will see some of them in some of these photographs--donned their World War I uniforms, their military uniforms, the uniforms that they had worn to protect the Nation in segregated troops in our armed services. Those uniforms had hung in their closets. They put them back on to remind the mob that they were Americans, that they were patriots, that they had offered to give their lives, and so many never returned home. I thought that was kind of fascinating that you are being besieged; you are watching scores of your neighbors be murdered, lynched, burned; you are watching businesses being destroyed; and you still love your country so much that you go and get your uniform, your military uniform, and put it on and stand in your doorway to protect your house. On that same night, the police chief, the sheriff, and a judge requested that Governor JBA Robertson send the National Guard in so that they would have troops to restore order. Around this time, however, fires began to erupt in the town of Greenwood. Remember, this was called then, and it is now, the Black Wall Street of America. It was great commerce, great independence, great businesses, and great people developing a community that they could be proud of, that Oklahoma could be proud of, and that the Nation could be proud of. Around this time, fires began to erupt, and firefighters were actually threatened by the White mobs as they tried to extinguish the flames. They could not protect all of the homes. That is why 1,000 homes burned down. They started rounding up Black civilians for them to be interred, to be locked up, put in jail. From 2 a.m. that morning until 5 a.m., members of the Tulsa Police Department, the National Guard, and American Legion formed mobs of White men into companies and made a plan to invade Greenwood at daybreak. They were going to end it once and for all, even though they had started it. Unlike the gun battles of the night before, this violence was more one sided during this invasion as it was carried out. Despite pockets of resistance from Black residents, they were overwhelmed, the women, the children, and the elderly. We have this crazy, crazy situation where this is happening in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and yet there is not a sound from the White House. Knowing that the National Guard has been called up, knowing by this time that 200 Black citizens had been murdered, there is this eerie, eerie silence. The mobs carried out their terrorizing campaign. They did it with the old-style, early automobiles, the few that were around at the time. They did it with machine guns mounted on grain elevators. They did it as mobs, with tiki torches and knives and shotguns. They were organized and began methodically burning Greenwood down block by block, while women and children stood there watching people being set ablaze. It is horrific. It is the sort of thing that I really don't want to have to come here and talk about, but unless we tell the story of how we became who we are, every aspect of that story, I think we do a disservice to history. It is something, as I have said before, that is just absolutely shameful. Dr. A.C. Jackson, who at the time was a Black doctor and one of America's more prominent surgeons, a Black man, was murdered surrendering with his hands in the air on the steps of his porch. His home was then looted and burned. An elderly, paralyzed Black man was gunned down when he refused, when ordered, to stand. He couldn't stand. He was paralyzed. He was shot down and killed. These are the reports that are still in the newspapers of the time, those that talked about and wrote about what was happening. A Black double amputee was tied to the bumper of a car and dragged through the streets until he died and could not say anything else. While there was resistance, including a group of Black men fighting the invaders at the Mount Zion Baptist Church there in Greenwood, the resistance was ultimately scattered by overwhelming machine gun fire. As I have said before, this scene, and scenes like this, are part of the history that we have to pledge to ourselves that we will never, ever revisit. You can see these persons who were the last ones that did not get murdered. What does the headline say? ``Captured Negroes on way to convention hall . . . June 1, 1921.'' It was a community of law-abiding, hardworking, successful people that caused Black communities around the Nation to look at Tulsa as the epitome of what could happen in terms of commerce and what could happen in terms of education and what could happen in terms of just being able to raise families the right way in America. That picture never returned to the way it was. People envied what was going on there until what they knew had happened and what we all know did happen. Again, practically every building in that Black community, dozens of churches, five hotels, three restaurants, four drug stores, eight doctor's offices, two dozen grocery stores, a public library, and over 1,000 homes burned to the ground. As I said before, this is really not something that anybody wants to talk about or regurgitate. It is very painful, quite frankly, when you read through the books of history and see this. My role here on the floor is not to make anybody feel bad or to shame anybody. I just want us to remember that this took place, to know it, and to not assume that things like this will never happen again. If you live long enough, you might see everything twice. We must pledge ourselves as a nation that we would never ever permit something like this to take place again. There was silence from the White House when this was happening. The Governor there finally got involved on the third day. Martial law was declared on June 1. The massacre had largely ceased by then, and the fires continued to smolder and burn throughout the day. That martial law was lifted on June 3. The National Guard left Tulsa on June 4. The primary role of the National Guard during the massacre was to arbitrarily take any and all Black men into custody, which prevented them from trying to fight the blazes that were burning down their own homes. This may also be hard to believe, but internment camps were set up at the Convention Hall, McNulty Park, and Tulsa County Fairgrounds. We didn't see internment camps again until the 1950s when Americans of Japanese ancestry were huddled up and locked behind bars out of a strange and twisted paranoid fear that they somehow would forget their loyalty to their new homes and their loyalty to the country that they loved. These were the first internment camps set up in Tulsa, and armed guards were placed there to oversee the 4,000 to 6,000 people who were detained in those camps, which were reported at the time to have terrible sanitary conditions and inadequate food. For at least a month after the massacre, African Americans needed to be sponsored by a White Tulsan in order to get a special ID card in order to leave the internment camp for 24 hours. You really just can't make this up. Without their card, those without employment were forced to work, to clean the city, to bury more bodies that had not been buried, and to live in that internment camp for almost a year, 4,000 to 6,000 people. It is difficult to fully confirm the number of casualties. I have said before the best estimates by reporters at the time and the newspaper were that there were 300 people killed, that many of them were just thrown into mass graves. It was difficult to count because you were not allowed out on the streets. Reports from the Red Cross at that time documented at least 700 injuries, people who lost their eyes, lost their limbs, had their fingers cut off. These sights, these sounds, and these horrors that I have just described bear a resemblance to an apocalyptic war zone, quite frankly, but it wasn't a war zone. It was the country that we love. ``My country, tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.'' It was devilish destruction that took place. I want to put up these numbers again for somebody just tuning in and asking what I am talking about. I am using the end of Black History Month, again, not to sing flowery songs or to talk about great achievements within the African-American community because we do that throughout the year, but to talk about a pain that continues to burn in the hearts of people who had to go through that, and to remind all of us that this really did happen. In 1921, Oklahoma impaneled a grand jury that subpoenaed 200 witnesses and returned 70 indictments, interestingly enough, mostly against Black people in the community who were the victims of the riot and victims of the massacre. Appallingly, the only people ever accused and the only people to go to prison were the Black people of that community. The grand jury deemed that the massacre was a riot and blamed it on Black men who went to the courthouse that night at the request of the sheriff to help protect the courthouse and to help keep mobs from lynching the young 19-year-old kid who was there and had been falsely accused. Tulsa's Public Welfare Board was formed to handle the rebuilding-- remember, this was 1921--which was replaced by Tulsa's then-mayor, T.D. Evans, with a reconstruction committee. In his speech announcing the committee, Mayor Evans again blamed the riot on the Black people of Greenwood and suggested that the land should be redeveloped for industrial purposes. Remember, this was Black Wall Street at the time, the envy of communities around the country, the model of self-initiatives, discipline, and citizenship, but the mayor said it ought to be redeveloped for industrial purposes. Seated on the committee that granted his wish were individuals that included the likes of Tate Brady, who was a wealthy White landowner who was also later identified in several reports as a leading Klansman. The city tried to force survivors out of Greenwood by passing a new fire ordinance that made rebuilding extremely expensive. Even though your house had been burned down, you would think the government would try to help you, but they made it more expensive since so many homes of the 1,000 that had been burned never got rebuilt. A year later, in September 1921, an African-American attorney named Buck Colbert Franklin secured a permanent injunction against that ordinance, even though many had already been arrested for simply trying to rebuild their homes. The FBI got involved, and a gentleman by the name of T.F. Weiss, a special agent, was leading up this effort. The FBI's predecessor agency was also sent at that time to investigate whether crimes had taken place during the riot--whether crimes had taken place. We have a complete onslaught of violence that carries over for 3 days where 300 people are murdered while living in the community that they helped to build, where all of their businesses are burned to the ground, where 1,000 homes are totally destroyed, where the cost and the estimate was more than the State of Oklahoma even wanted to think about. Yet, in Agent Weiss' own report, he makes mention that, on the night of May 31, a police officer had recruited men from nearby towns to join in the raid that would take place the next morning, which should have been evidence itself of preplanning, but the report was never turned in. Agent Weiss took less than a week to complete his interviews and write a report, which may have never been reviewed by an individual at the Justice Department. In the halls of our judicial system, victims and descendants desperately continued to seek some form of redress, and they were all met with similar blockades. In September 1926, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that insurance companies could not be sued for the damages that took place as a result of the massacre. You pay your insurance year after year. After you have built your own house and lived there with your family and somebody burns it down, you go to whatever the insurance company was at the time to try to seek some relief, but the Supreme Court in Oklahoma ruled that those insurance companies didn't have to do a damn thing, nothing. Residents tried to sue Mayor Evans. They tried to sue the Tulsa police and others throughout the decade of the 1920s. All of those lawsuits, all of them, were dismissed. In 2003, survivors and descendants of Tulsa alleging civil rights violations and a denial of equal protection in the case of Alexander v. Oklahoma began a process that gets us closer to where we are today. There were descendants. In fact, there were two women who both, I believe, are 105 or 106 years of age who fought this. They never stopped trying. They never gave up. They were the last group of survivors. They brought their case all the way to the Supreme Court. These are the witnesses who saw 300 people murdered, 1,000 homes destroyed, 85 businesses destroyed. They held on some sort of way because they believed, as they said, that they had to tell the story before they died because no one else wanted to tell the story. It is unbelievable. In June of last year, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the case, finding that the plaintiffs did not have legitimate grievances or that their grievances did not fall within the scope of the law that they sought to utilize. This is just absolutely amazing. I don't know what it would have been like to hold on all those many years with a nightmare of a story in your gut and in your belly, with the crying and the pain and the violence that you witnessed as a young person, but they held on. They held on. In 2010, just a decade before the Supreme Court of Oklahoma's decision, the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation was opened in Tulsa. That center was established to foster dialogue about historical and racial violence and the lingering effects that it has on people and how they find that pain and promote healing. That is why this story is so interesting. Mrs. Viola Ford Fletcher and Ms. Lessie Benningfield Randle never stopped believing that their country would, in fact, correct a wrong that had gone on so long. God only knows that when they leave this planet for their eternal rest, we have to carry on with their belief that there will be a reckoning, that there will be reconciliation, and that there will be a need to tell the story, not to make anybody feel bad but to make everybody more committed to the fact that we have to be one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty for all. I don't want to belabor the point, so I won't. I can just tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I have lived long enough to know that difficulties between groups in our society are not novel nor are they new but that our approach to those differences must be both. For more than 200 years we have joined together different colors, different creeds, and different nationalities, all under that one flag, and while this assembled diversity has produced the most successful experience of democracy in the world's history, we have by no means clearly achieved perfect harmony. Slavery was allowed to exist legally for almost 200 years. Crosses were burned to terrorize people in an ugly desecration of the symbol of love. Just a century ago, Protestants and Catholics battled in the streets of New York City, and on that day 44 Catholics were killed. At the end of the decade of the 1930s, a ship by the name of the St. Louis with a human cargo of Jewish men and Jewish women was denied safe harbor in this, the land of the free and the home of the brave and sent back to a madman named Hitler. At the beginning of World War II, as I mentioned earlier, Japanese Americans were huddled up and placed behind bars in internment camps out of the fear that they somehow would forget their loyalty to their new home. After the attacks of 9/11, Arab and Muslim Americans were set upon and beaten in the streets of America--lest we ever forget, by angry men who formed mobs of their own--because their religion and because their ethnicity were deemed to be a threat to the land that they professed to love. There have been times that we have sought as a Nation to ban the teaching of foreign language and to slam shut the doors of elementary schools simply because they were sponsored by religious groups. There have been occasions and there have been periods where our differences of race, our differences of religion, and our differences of nationality have produced an ugly alienation instead of producing harmony. Nevertheless, as I prepare to conclude this portion of my remarks, let me remind all of us that there are still yet other differences: The difference between the people who have and the people who have not. The difference between the people in this room, Members of the United States Congress, you and I, and the millions of people in this country who at this hour are out of work or working at jobs that provide them with a scant living and no real dignity. The difference between us, you and I, on one hand, living as we do in relative comfort and the millions of people in the streets across America torn by the terrible pain of drug addiction. The difference between us and the illiterates. The difference between us and the homeless. The difference between our child parents and the 15-year-olds in towns and communities across this Nation, who at this hour are about to have children of their own, creating a situation where they are lost, unprepared, and doomed to raising another generation of disadvantaged children. Those differences produce frustration, and they produce anger. America at her best has always treated those differences with a blend of common sense and compassion. America at her worst has treated such differences with the empty evenhandedness of Marie Antoinette: Just let them eat cake. We can't be bothered. Yet we know that this is not a perfect nation and we are not perfect people, but God calls all of us to a perfect mission. Whether we are Christian, Jew, Muslim or something else, it is still a mission to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, teach the illiterate, provide guidance to our young, and security to our seniors. Part of that guidance means remembering the stony road that we charred to get to where we are here in 2025, by remembering something as painful even as the Tulsa race massacre, which I have tried to talk about now over and over again, and to remember committing ourselves and promising those who have gone before us and those who will come after us that we will never allow something like that to happen again. I have not given up on the American Dream or the American possibility, and I have come to the floor tonight to ask people around this country not to give up also. I am convinced that this Nation still stands before the world as perhaps the last expression of a possibility of mankind, devising a social order where justice is the supreme ruler and law is but its instrument, where freedom is the dominant creed and order is but its principle, where equity--equity--is the common practice and fraternity the true human condition. It is also my conviction that we may be the last generation of Americans who has the opportunity to help our Nation totally fulfill that promise and to realize that still-yet-to-achieve possibility. So, Mr. Speaker, again, I call our attention to the matter of the Tulsa race massacre as we conclude Black History Month tomorrow, but this could be December. It doesn't matter. It is something we have to not hide in books and say: Those books are banned; and tell a generation of young people: You can't read this, you don't need to know that. Again, we have to use it in an instructive way to talk about how far we have come since then and why we must do more and why something like that can't take place. I am going to talk a bit just briefly about this whole situation that we are facing, regrettably, with people being laid off and fired and being asked: What did you do last week? I do want to make sure that my colleague, the distinguished gentleman from Alabama, has an opportunity to come forward and make another very important point. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Figures).

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order today.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to an iconic Baltimore institution and one of the top five public arts high schools in the United States, the Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA). The Baltimore School for the Arts was founded in 1979, envisioned as a school with a specialized mission to give Baltimore City students the opportunity to train for a career in the visual and performing arts. The BSA set out to achieve this without sacrificing their students' academic potential, combining their artistic instruction with a rigorous college preparatory program. For 45 years, the Baltimore School for the Arts has not only fulfilled the mission entrusted to it--it has far surpassed it. With a graduation rate exceeding 95 percent and one of Maryland's highest reading proficiency rates, the BSA's students thrive inside the classroom and beyond. Its alumni boast a six-year college graduation rate of 81 percent and they can be seen in prestigious galleries and on stages and television screens across the country. The BSA has achieved these consistent and impressive results by instilling in its students the core set of values upon which the institution was founded. Its instructors encourage pupils' curiosity, foster their self-confidence; build up their technical expertise; promote cooperation and collaboration teach about global perspectives; and encourage students to develop a sense of purpose. These values enable them to mold students who are not only talented artists and scholars, but also well-rounded people. The BSA has proven to be a tremendous boon for the Baltimore community. They have formed professional collaborations with institutions across the city, including the Everyman and Hippodrome Theatres, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, and the Walters Art Museum, providing their students with the opportunity to learn from walking artistic professionals. So many notable alumni have walked through its doors: Actress Jada Pinkett Smith, actor Lawrence Gilliard, Jr., fashion designer Christian Siriano, visionary painter and sculptor Shinique Smith, and the one-of-a-kind rapper, songwriter, and actor, Tupac Shakur. Along with the more than 400 high school students that the BSA serves every year, the school also provides a free after-school program, To Work in Gaining Skills (TWIGS), to over 500 Baltimore City students between the 2nd and 8th grades. These students are introduced to various art disciplines and skills, and TWIGS alumni make up roughly half of the BSA's annual freshman admissions. In addition, the BSA annually brings thousands of children and their families to their campus to see free live performances. Mr. Speaker, I commend the Baltimore School of Arts for their great contributions to my community and its people over these last 45 years. The high-quality education that they offer introduces students to new art forms and career paths while imbuing them with deep confidence that they can achieve whatever they set their minds to. Given the magnitude of them achievements thus far, I eagerly look forward to seeing what great artists, performers, and innovators emerge from the halls of the Baltimore School for the Arts in the years to come.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the outstanding achievements and historic tenure of Maryland's outgoing United States Attorney, Erek Lawrence Barron. He is an experienced lawyer, an accomplished legislator, and a champion of civil rights, and his time as U.S. Attorney has left the people of Maryland safer and more secure in their communities, with greater confidence in the integrity of the justice system. Mr. Barron earned his Juris Doctor from the prestigious George Washington University Law School in 1999 and earned admission to the Maryland Bar that same year. He began his career in public service as an Assistant State's Attorney in Prince George's County in 2001, primarily prosecuting violent crimes, before transferring to Baltimore City in 2004 and continuing in this position until 2006. The next phase of his career was at the Department of Justice, as a Trial Attorney in their Criminal Division. There, he focused on tackling the scourge of organized crime, investigating and prosecuting figures involved in regional and national gangs. This law enforcement experience, gained at both the state and federal level, had Mr. Barron well-prepared for his subsequent role as Counsel and Special Advisor to then-Senator Joe Biden, serving on the United States Senate's Judicial Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs. Soon after, he was a member of the Justice and Civil Rights Review Team for President Barack Obama's Presidential Transition Team. Given his high qualifications and extensive experience, it is no surprise that in 2014, the good people of Prince George's County, Maryland elected Mr. Barron to the House of Delegates. In the state legislature, he prioritized public safety and criminal Justice reform, co-authoring bipartisan legislation that instituted sweeping improvements to Maryland's sentencing and corrections systems. His thoughtfulness and effectiveness as a legislator helped Mr. Barron win re-election in 2018, and he continued serving in the General Assembly through October 2021, when the United States Senate confirmed him as the chief federal law enforcement official in the great state of Maryland. When he took his oath of office, Mr. Barron became the first African American to serve as Maryland's United States Attorney. Despite the historic nature of his service, Mr. Barron never sought out the limelight--he focused entirely on doing his job and doing it well, working closely with state and local law enforcement to implement crime-fighting strategies that reduced violent crime. Most importantly, Mr. Barron got results. During his tenure, Maryland saw homicide rates drop by 41 percent. He established a new Violent and Organized Crime Section within the office and instructed his prosecutors to utilize an ``Al Capone'' model of prosecution, using all available legal means and resources to get repeat offenders off the streets. He also established a new Civil Rights and Special Victims Section, a dedicated unit focused on prosecuting hate crimes, civil rights violations, and crimes committed against our most vulnerable populations. Mr. Barron's incredible value to Maryland is exemplified by a case of federal-local partnership that led to a major crime bust. Ivan Bates, Baltimore's State's Attorney, approached Mr. Barron for assistance in getting the federal resources necessary for a wiretap. Mr. Barron personally lobbied law enforcement leaders and secured those resources--and after a 6-month operation, 39 people across 4 criminal networks were arrested, 67 firearms were confiscated, 15 stolen vehicles were recovered, and more than $350,000 in drug money was seized. That is the power of an effective partnership. Now that his term as our United States Attorney has ended, I join Governor Moore, former Governor Hogan, and law enforcement officials across our state in thanking Mr. Erek Lawrence Barron for his tireless efforts to make our streets safer and our communities more secure. I congratulate him on his many achievements.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a dear friend, a loving family man, an inspiring educator, a devout pastor, an accomplished writer, an award-winning journalist, and a person of the highest caliber--the late Reverend Dr. Timothy Lamar Tooten, Sr. Dr. Tim Tooten was not a native son of Baltimore, but we embraced him as one of our own. He gravitated towards journalism as a child, interviewing his middle school classmates using a pencil as a microphone. Tim's course in life was set in high school, when a teacher asked him to record a Public Service Announcement for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), urging voter registration--and he fell in love with the sound of his voice on the air. He continued broadcasting as a student at Florida State University. His career began in earnest when he was chosen for a competitive internship with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, spending a year in Washington, D.C. learning his trade. His next stop was Huntington, West Virginia, where he spent five years working for WSAZ-TV. In Huntington, he met the love of his life, Charleen Dawson Tooten, and they would spend the next 40 years together in blissful matrimony. After his time in Huntington was done, Tim moved his family to Baltimore, working as a reporter at WMAR-2 for just over a year. Following this chapter at WMAR-2, he began selling insurance to support his family while continuing to do freelance journalism. This freelance work led to his hiring at WBAL-TV, the station that he called home for 35 years. At WBAL-TV, Dr. Tooten was the station's only education reporter, and he gradually became one of Baltimore's most recognized faces and most trusted voices. He was especially beloved by the children of the Baltimore area, who knew that the snow day wasn't official until they heard it from Tim. Dr. Tooten's voice was respected not only by the people of Baltimore, but also by his journalistic colleagues. He was immensely proud of his work on the documentary Africa's Maryland, wherein he traveled to Liberia to explore that country's historical connections to our state. This documentary was lauded by the press, earning a regional Emmy as well as the National Headliner Award Best of Show and the National Edward R. Murrow Award. His documentary East is East, chronicling life growing up as a Black man on Maryland's Eastern Shore, earned him another National Headliner Award, and in 2024, Dr. Tooten was inducted into the Emmy Silver Circle Hall of Fame, recognizing his 25 years of significant contributions to the broadcasting industry. Dr. Tim Tooten was a man who wore many hats. He was passionate about education, providing mentorship to young Black men at Perry Hall High School and dispensing wisdom in his broadcasting classes at Loyola University Maryland. He furthered his own education, earning degrees in theology and ministry while working full time and raising a family. Rev. Dr. Tooten organized his own church, Harvest Christian Ministries, and devoted himself to spreading the good word in his retirement. He served on the board of the Maryland Bible Society, and in 2017, he penned a book, Leading by Example: A Parental Guide to Teaching and Modeling Christian Faith at Home, which married his twin joys of teaching and preaching. Though Tim was taken from us far too soon, I find comfort in knowing that the Lord has called him home for a purpose greater than we can understand. I take heart in the knowledge that he awaits his loved ones in the Kingdom of Heaven, basking in the glory of the Almighty.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a friend, a great journalist, a humanitarian, and a man of faith, Rev. Dr. Tim Tooten. Tim was an admired journalist having spent more than 35 years reporting at Baltimore's WBAL-TV. He was a distinguished pastor at Harvest Christian Ministries and an accomplished writer. Tim was also an award-winning filmmaker, a documentary person who believed in reporting and sharing facts, as well as a cherished teacher to so many. He confronted life with the courage of his convictions and confronted death with the conviction of his faith. Our condolences across the Baltimore area go out to his wife, Charlene; his loving children; and his grandchildren during this time. We will miss you, my friend, but we will never ever forget you.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I may not use the entire 60 minutes, but I appreciate the opportunity. I would encourage other Members of the House, who are still in town, to certainly come over and to seek recognition on this as I try to talk a bit about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and why it is so very important that we, at least here in the House, take a moment or two or, in this case an hour or less, to reflect on the life, the legacy, and even some of the myths that have circulated over the years. Mr. Speaker, I am honored today to rise to really celebrate the birth of civil rights icon and leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, had he lived, would have been 96 years of age yesterday, and to talk a bit about the dream that he tried to put forward in his short 39 years of life, a dream that he felt would be the North Star and the beacon for our country with respect to human rights and human dignity. As I thought about that and I thought about his dream, I am reminded of a passage in Scripture, Mr. Speaker, in the book of Genesis, chapter 37 and verse 18, where it says, ``And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another: Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say some evil beast hath devoured him and we shall see what will become of his dreams.'' Well, that dream, despite the bullet of a lone assassin on April 4, 1968, did very much grow, thrive, and replicate itself as a dream not just for a race of people or group of people but as a dream for an entire Nation. I remember in 1980, as a young member of the Baltimore City Council, petitioning the council to join with other local governments around the Nation to push for the establishment of a Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday in our respective towns, cities, and hamlets. For years, every January 15, I, along with so many others, would drive from Baltimore to Washington to join civil rights leaders and recording artists like Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Jesse Jackson, Congressman John Conyers, and thousands of others, and we would rally right here on the steps of this Capitol, in the cold, in January, on the 15th of each year, again, to petition for the establishment of a Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. I, like many others, recognize that that in and of itself was a beginning. The real beginning, however, has to go back to the Federal legislation that recognizes Martin Luther King Jr. Day as the bill introduced first by Congressman John Conyers of Michigan just days after the assassination of Dr. King. Unfortunately, it would take 15 years of those protests, perseverance, attempts, tenacity, and pure resolve by civil rights leaders and others across this Nation for the holiday to become recognized, and then finally signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. Then, unfortunately, it would take an additional 17 years for it to be recognized in all 50 States across the country. Fittingly, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designed to intentionally inspire all Americans to volunteer and to give back to their communities. In fact, it is the only Federal holiday classified as a national day of service. Like so many others, I feel personally driven out of my respect for the life and legacy of Dr. King to find a way to celebrate this observance through acts of service, for it is only through reflecting the values and the morals and the principles of Dr. King into our lives that we will enact the dream that he has so often been associated with, where justice is the supreme ruler, freedom is the dominant creed, and equity the common practice. I would urge us to take a moment in this discussion or any other discussion, a moment of remembrance to really talk about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the man, the myth, and the legacy. I think it is important to point out that Dr. King was born, as I said before, on January 15, 1929, in the segregated south in Atlanta, Georgia, where his grandfather began the family's tenure many, many years ago in another State as the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. After graduating from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, Dr. King then enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University. It was in Boston where Dr. King would meet Coretta Scott, who was also a student at the nearby New England Conservatory. As we all know and as history has taught us, the two would ultimately marry, and Coretta Scott would become Coretta Scott King, and together they would be a formidable force in their own right, in their own time, and in joint pursuit of equality and justice for all. This remarkable partnership between Dr. King and Coretta Scott King also brought forth four children who grew up to embrace, uphold, and protect the values that their parents had devoted their lives to. I would be remiss if I did not uplift the names of Martin Luther King III, Bernice Albertine King, Yolanda Denise King, and Dexter Scott King, who we unfortunately lost last January. In 1954, as I indicated, their father became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. King, by this time, was a member of the Executive Committee of the NAACP and would join also the Montgomery Improvement Association. He would also help to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that was formed to provide leadership for a growing and sustaining civil rights movement. Dr. King rose to prominence as a revered leader of that movement in 1955, when a young woman, a seamstress by the name of Rosa Parks, refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery because of the color of her skin. Inspired by one woman's act of moral courage, in the face of an immoral systemic system of law, Dr. King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted 381 days and is heralded as the catalyst, that one act that began the modern civil rights movement. Now, in order to understand it, you have to keep it in its proper context. Citizens of Montgomery were so outraged that they could pay and were forced like everyone else to pay their taxes, that they could contribute to the economy, that they could find a way to sustain families, and that they could find a way, as all citizens did, to support the government there, only to be told that they could not ride a bus to get to work unless they sat in the back of the bus because of the color of their skin. It might be difficult to understand, but it is important to point out that those men and women who wanted to maintain and hold onto their dignity decided that they would walk to work, walk to the store, walk to church as opposed to sitting in the back of that bus any longer. Mr. Speaker, 381 days is a lot of days, and it takes a lot of resolve to get through something like that. It is one thing to see it in a history book. It is another thing if you are living it and you are walking all those miles every day, through summer, winter, fall, and spring, back and forth, to do the things that you had to do, like get to your job, the things you needed to do, to shop for groceries, and to be able to do anything else, but they did it for 381 days. They did it because of the inspiration that they got from Rosa Parks, and they did it also because of the inspiration that they got from this young preacher by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. During that boycott, Dr. King was arrested. His home was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse over and over again. Now, he was arrested. No one else that did anything else to stop him was arrested, but he was arrested simply for articulating the problem, supporting the efforts of Ms. Parks, and encouraging a community to stand up and to speak for itself. As I said, his home was bombed. He was subjected to all kinds of insults and personal abuse. By the way, Dr. King was locked up in jail 29 times for standing up for fairness and fair play. Yet, he never matched the violence he got with violence of his own. On June 5, 1956, a Federal District Court ruled that the State of Alabama's segregation policy on public buses was, in fact, unconstitutional. When the United States Supreme Court upheld that ruling, it was affirmed that the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Dr. King as a result of the efforts of Rosa Parks, was a true story of triumph, and it was, in fact, for many, year after year, a focal point on what civil disobedience can look like and what success can be born of it. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would go on to travel for over 6 million miles, speaking over 2,500 times to launch his nonviolent protest movement that spanned the Nation. It began to grow, and it began to unfurl, and it found its way, reaching and touching the hearts of a lot of people who never even gave a thought about civil rights, but when they thought about their own selves, their own families, and their own desire to live and grow up in a country that many of whom had fought for overseas and defended with their lives, people then realized that this was not just about Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks, but it was, in fact, about the moral consciousness of our Nation. After that successful boycott, Dr. King was arrested again, this time in Birmingham. It was in Birmingham when he wrote and declared from a cell a number of things that America must, in fact, consider. He wrote on scraps of paper because they wouldn't even give him writing pads, but he wrote them nonetheless, and those letters are often referred to today as the ``Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' in which he fiercely declared: ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' We hear that repeated over and over and over again. We should know that those words in that letter from that Birmingham jail cell brought national and international attention to the civil rights movement as we know it. Some of you will recall the grainy film and the black and white footage of the great March on Washington that occurred on August 28, 1963, where the eyes and the ears of the entire world would be fixated on the magnificent power and oratory of Dr. King. I know, as a 14-year-old kid, remembering it, watching on a very small black and white TV set the delayed broadcast because live TV was not what it is today, and I couldn't believe as I sat there the number of people who appeared to be a sea of witnesses that had assembled. Dr. King that day was introduced as the moral leader of our Nation, and he delivered a message which empowered a quarter of a million people in attendance. His words that day brought my mother to tears as I sat in a row house in west Baltimore with my three younger sisters, all motionless from the eloquent force in which he delivered a message of love over hate in his famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech. At that historic March on Washington, more now than a half century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood before a quarter of a million people, as I said, assembled at the memorial of one of our Nation's greatest leaders, and on that famous day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., heir to Abraham Lincoln, addressed the crowd in these words: We have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence that they, in fact, were signing a promissory note to which all Americans would one day fall heir. This note was a promise that all men and women would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, even before the Republic was born, it had already compromised the moral principles articulated in that Declaration of Independence and in that preamble to the Constitution and in all the other pronouncements that it used to justify its revolution against the king's tyranny by having subjected human beings, my own ancestors, to bondage of the flesh as well as bondage of the spirit. The enslavement of the Negro, the annexation of the Hispanic, and the termination of the American Indian made our Nation's beginning an iniquitous conception because it was born in hypocrisy and dedicated to a false and twisted concept that White men were superior to non-White men and, therefore, somehow entitled to enslave them, oppress them, and, if necessary, destroy them. In the 200 years since the writing of that preamble to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and all the other pronouncements that America issued to justify, again, its revolution against tyranny, we have surpassed the wildest expectations and aspirations of our Founders. We have gone beyond human measure and created a nation of unparalleled power and unparalleled influence. We have grown from a small band of 13 impoverished Colonies to become the strongest, the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. Our wealth as a nation is unmatched. America's military forces, perhaps and despite all other propaganda, really have no equal. Our industry and our technology remain superior, Europe, China, and Japan notwithstanding. Because of our ideals and our principles, we wield a mighty and forceful hand in world affairs. There can be no doubt that the American flag is still respected by billions of the world's people as a symbol of freedom from tyranny. Every morning at the start of school, millions of kids still around the country pause to utter the words: ``I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' Yet, if Dr. King were here today, he might call into question the fact that that does not always still ring true because, in many ways, we are still not one nation. That is the challenge. Far too many of our citizens do not see their existence as having been due to or under the direction of God. We are not yet indivisible, and nowhere in our own lifetime can it be said that we have practiced liberty and justice for all of our people. The genius that our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us was to have been, if realized, a form of government based on opportunity but measured against the promise of America. In many respects, we have still fallen short in ways that continue to haunt us, plague us, and, unfortunately, divide us. Have things changed for the better? Yes. Has there been real and measurable progress? Yes. But it is not just a matter of having come a long, long way. It is, in fact, a matter of having still yet a long, long way to go. As we begin the celebration of Dr. King's 96th birthday, let it serve, I hope, as a reminder of a union that he forged in the Halls of Congress that ensured the signing and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965. Dr. King's spirit should and really must renew our resolve, particularly as Members of Congress and as Americans of all walks of life, to stand for justice, fairness, and equal opportunity whenever and wherever possible. Across his life, Dr. King was awarded five honorary degrees, named Man of the Year by Time magazine, and, at the age of 35, became the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but all of that didn't matter to him. All the accolades and the other things that had been heaped upon him during his life--and, I am sure, since his death--really would not stack up to mean very much in the heart, soul, and mind of Martin Luther King, Jr. At 39 years of age, the person who led the nonviolent movement was taken from us in a cruel manner by the single bullet of a lone assassin. It really didn't matter, as he said, as he preached his own eulogy, what people said. What mattered is that he tried to live his life to exemplify the dream that he had and that still burns. I can remember the numbness I felt on that evening of April 4, 1968. Like so many others, I felt my heart race when I heard the words come over the radio that said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is dead. When I reflect back on his life, as I am doing and I appreciate so many of you who are watching are also doing today, I am still reminded of a man who was unawed by opinion, unseduced by flattery, and undismayed by disaster. He confronted his life with the courage of his convictions and then confronted his death with the courage of his faith. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I began by referencing that Scripture in the Book of Genesis, because Dr. Martin Luther King really was, and in the hearts of many of us remains, a dreamer. I will close by going back to that passage, Genesis 37: ``And when they saw him from afar, even before he had come near to them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, behold the dreamer cometh. Come now therefore and let us slay him, and we will cast him into some old pit, and we will say that some evil beast has devoured him, and we shall see what becomes of his dreams.'' Just like that passage in Genesis, that dream has lived on. It lives in the hearts and the minds of so many of us. It is a dream that young people look at and try to fashion themselves after. It is a dream that many of us who are much older will smile and go to our grave knowing that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was, in the truest sense, a true American that gave all he could, not just for his dream, but for his country. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, in this time of national division and in this time of great partisanship, I am reminded of when we went through similar periods, and it was always Elijah Cummings on this side of the aisle and others who would remind us that we really were better than this, that we really did have a higher calling. For me, personally, as a friend, as a former colleague, and as someone that I admired--even though he would tell you he admired me, I admired him even more--it is just a great honor to bring this bill forward. I would ask that it is adopted today, and I thank all of those Members who supported this, both Democrats and Republicans, and the sponsor.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the ranking member, for his kind and overly gracious remarks. Mr. Speaker, in his absence, I thank Chairman Comer who made a commitment several months back that we would get to this point and for his cosponsorship of this bill. I thank my other colleagues from the State of Maryland, some of whom will be speaking today. I rise in obvious support of this, encouraging Members of this body to embrace it and to say that the diligence and the collective commitment to your word to get us to this point means a lot to me. It is not lost on me. It is not lost on the people of the State of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, this legislation designates the United States Postal Service facility, as you heard, located at 340 South Loudon Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, as the United States Representative Elijah Cummings Post Office Building. This legislation will bestow, I believe, a very fitting honor on a former chair of the Oversight Committee, former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and, most importantly, an unwavering servant of the people in the House that we now all serve in. His legacy, in many respects, lives through the work that he has done, and this legislation will ensure once and for all that his name will continue to be called by the people that he so dutifully served. Mr. Speaker, Elijah Cummings, as was noted a moment ago, was born on January 18, 1951, to Ruth Elma and Robert Cummings, two South Carolina sharecroppers who moved to Baltimore in search of more opportunities during the period of the Great Migration. Elijah's parents worked long and hard, as did many parents in that era, because they were up against so many things coming out of the Great Depression and out of a period of war that our Nation found itself in. They worked and also served as preachers of a local church that both of them founded. With their teachings, his parents instilled in Elijah a sense of faith, justice, and morality that would go on to exemplify his four decades of public service. While they were not formally educated in the traditional sense, Elijah's parents made certain that all of their children understood the importance and the essence of education. He tirelessly worked, as many of you know, over and over again to earn his Phi Beta Kappa key at Howard University and his juris doctorate degree at the University of Maryland School of Law. Elijah knew that his story would ultimately illustrate the power of hard work and perseverance, and he always did that in a sense of believing that it would be the kind of message that young people who might be lost in many different ways would find a way to latch onto. His values instilled in that generation, we believe, a whole new sense of public service. As a young lawyer in 1983, Elijah was elected and served with distinction in the Maryland House of Delegates. I might say, his personal credibility and relationships with members of that body existed then, and they still exist now. He has, in many respects, given us the sort of model and the sort of example that we all talk about and many of us strive to attain. In 1996, Elijah won his first of 12 elections to this body, assuming the seat that I had voluntarily vacated to head up the presidency of the NAACP. Elijah's sense of fairness, his respect for others, and his relentless efforts to make life better for all people won him the respect and the admiration of his colleagues on this side of the aisle and his colleagues on that side of the aisle. He and I were friends for 42 years up until the day of his death, and so I carry with me a lot of memorable moments of his congressional career, of the time that we served together on the board at Morgan State University, and as our people will tell you, as part of our organizations, our time together learning politics in the street, finding a way to organize and make a real difference. He was the only person that I know of who continued to remind us that we could be better than this. I am so glad that Mr. Raskin brought that up. Mr. Speaker, I am hoping I might get an additional 30 seconds here. I would like to conclude. I know we are running out of time.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I extend my sincere thanks to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell) and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman) for their leadership on the floor today and for the long- standing diligence and civility that they bring to each and every debate. It is not lost on me at all. I also thank the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Federal Lands, Representative Grijalva; Representative Tom Tiffany; and Federal Lands Subcommittee Ranking Member Joe Neguse. They have my sincerest appreciation. It has been a bit of a struggle to get to this point, but we found a way to get here in a bipartisan manner, and I am deeply, deeply appreciative. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6826, legislation to designate the visitor and education center at Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine as the Paul S. Sarbanes Visitor and Education Center. The Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine is a unit of the National Park Service, and it resides in the heart of my congressional district in Baltimore. As many Members may know, Fort McHenry was, as was mentioned earlier, the site of the historic Battle of Baltimore, the conflict between British and American forces which came to a head in the War of 1812. During the clash, American forces beat back British sea and land invasions off of the busy port city of Baltimore and permanently neutralized the commander of the invading British forces. The resistance of Baltimore's Fort McHenry during bombardment by the Royal Navy inspired the poem ``Defence of Fort M'Henry,'' which later became the lyrics to ``The Star-Spangled Banner,'' our national anthem. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people from across America visit the fort to engage in outdoor recreation and to learn more about one of the most defining moments of our Nation's history. The late Senator Paul Sarbanes, who served in this body for 6 years before eventually being elected to the Senate, was a champion of Fort McHenry from the beginning, and he firmly believed that the site would always be critical to understanding and appreciating our national heritage and our national identity. Throughout his career, Senator Sarbanes worked tirelessly to facilitate public enjoyment and a real understanding of the historic events and the people who are still connected to that site. Senator Sarbanes was and remained a true American patriot. He secured millions of dollars in Federal funds to enable critical repairs of the fort's deteriorating seawall, its masonry, and its foundations, and it stands as it does today and looks as it does today so much because of his tireless efforts. Likewise, he worked to introduce numerous bipartisan bills that eventually established the Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail as the 26th such trail in America. The trail covers Virginia, the District of Columbia, and the State of Maryland. Telling the stories of the events, people, and the places that led to the birth of the national anthem is one of the things that he took a great deal of pride in. Of course, he worked to build the visitor center, which we are discussing today, at that historic fort. As we know, Congress may authorize placement of a commemorative work, such as the naming of a center, in cases where there is compelling justification for the recognition that would permanently express the noteworthy and national relevance between both the person and the site. Having served here in this body with some of you--and I know I served with him many years ago--and having served with John Dingell, the distinguished ranking member's husband, Paul worked very, very hard not just to lift up the idea of saving and preserving the fort but why it was important to do it together as Democrats and Republicans. I particularly thank his son, John Sarbanes, who has served with us now for almost 18 years, who will be leaving this body in a few weeks, for the opportunity to be able to champion and to run with this legislation as an honor to his father and certainly as an honor to him. Mr. Speaker, I believe that passing H.R. 6826 undoubtedly would be a fitting tribute to Senator Sarbanes' memory and an appropriate acknowledgement of his connection to and advocacy for the site, the State, and the Nation. Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this legislation for a selfless American who gave everything he had and could to the Nation that he so loved.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, due to longstanding obligations in my Congressional District, I was unable to make three votes yesterday. Had I been present, I would have voted: NAY on Roll Call No. 458 for H.R. 9495; NAY on Roll Call No. 457 for H.R. 5342; and YEA on Roll Call No. 456 for H.R. 82.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a Maryland leader who is a visionary when it comes to policymaking and the epitome of Black excellence. Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins is a commanding trailblazer in our state who is currently serving as the Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. Delegate Wilkins was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved to the United States at just five years old. She was raised in neighboring Delaware and attended the University of Delaware before concluding her studies with a master's degree from American University. Chair Wilkins has always been steadfast in her lifelong mission of enacting policy change that makes a substantial difference in people's lives. Before she ever held public office, Wilkins began her professional career as an intern at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She would impressively develop within the organization from her position as an intern all the way to her current full-time role as the Director of State and Local Government Affairs working fiercely in the realms of immigration reform, education equity, and civil rights legislation. Wilkins' first steps into the political arena were through her positions on the board of the Montgomery County Association of Black Democrats and the Montgomery County Young Democrats. In 2014, she was elected to the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee. Then, in 2016, she was appointed to fill the vacant state delegate seat in the Maryland House of Delegates 20th District--becoming the first African American woman to assume this position. From the moment she took office, Delegate Wilkins has been a passionate and powerful voice in the House of Delegates on behalf of all of her constituents in Montgomery County, Maryland. She is respected by so many of her peers for being unapologetic in her fight for what is right. Delegate Wilkins masterfully embraces the spirit of legislating and swiftly transforms her legislative ideas into law. As the Vice Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, she has used her standing within the legislature boldly to lead the passage of election policy and expanding voter access--including the passage of Maryland's permanent mail-in ballot list, voting access for incarcerated individuals, and expansion of early voting sites. Her other legislative pursuits have encompassed other consequential policy areas including the passage of legislation pertaining to racial profiling and justice reform, maternal health, and increasing educational outcomes for all students. Wilkins' monumental record in the House of Delegates resulted in her being elected Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland in 2022. Without question, Chair Wilkins displays steadfast resoluteness with the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland as she paves the path forward for Maryland's diverse communities at the helm of the nation's largest state Black Caucus. Her tenure as the Caucus Chair has been forward thinking, dedicated, and triumphant fighting every day to improve the quality of life for Marylanders everywhere. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to pen these words to commend Chair Jheanelle Wilkins for her pride, determination, and spirit. I am eager and enthusiastic for her future, and Maryland's future, with Chair Wilkins at the forefront of our historic State House.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida for yielding. I know there are a lot of people who have a lot to say about someone whom we cared about and loved, and so I do appreciate this opportunity. I thank her and the honorable gentleman from the State of Nevada (Mr. Horsford), who is the chair of the caucus, for convening this Special Order tonight. It is a Special Order for a lawyer and a legislator, a woman who saw things that were not and found it in her heart to find a way to make those things come into existence. I extend my condolences to her husband, Elwyn, to her two adult children, to other members of the Jackson Lee family, and to the people of Houston who knew her, embraced her, loved her, and kept her. I first heard of Sheila Jackson Lee before she ever got here. In fact, I was a Member of the House then, and she came in with a big class. I think she got here in `95, and she won the election in 1994. I think Jim Clyburn was a part of that class, Bobby Scott, and Maxine Waters, a number of people who came in the door bigger than life, and there was Sheila who was also bigger than life. They taught us along the way things that were sometimes not so obvious about fighting for what you believe in. She was a member of the Houston City Council before she got here, and they didn't know what to do with her because she would not stop fighting for the things that she believed in. Madam Speaker, one of which was gun control and gun safety long before it became something popular for people to talk about and to advocate. It was in that Houston City Council that Sheila passed their first- ever gun safety ordinance, putting the onus on parents to keep guns away from children in the house, to keep them locked, or to not have them there altogether. Some people thought it was an overreach, but nobody knows to this day how many lives may have been saved and how many children could have been injured that were not. It was many years later that that same council and many of the people of Houston thanked her for what she had done. Before Sheila got here, Craig Washington was the elected Member of that district, and in his first term, Sheila challenged him for the congressional seat. She said: I need your support. I said: Sheila, Craig just supported me to be chair of the Black Caucus 2 years ago. I can't turn my back on him. She said: Well, don't turn your back, turn your front. Just stay out of it. I said: Okay, I am going to stay out of it. Everybody said she couldn't do it, you can't beat Craig Washington, and we all now know how that story concluded. When she came here and took the oath of office, I, like so many others, gave her a great big hug because I knew not just the Congressional Black Caucus but the Congress in general was going to be made better because of her indefatigable spirit. Sheila is a woman who never rested. You could walk the Halls here at midnight and see her hanging out at a Rules Committee meeting trying to make sure she can get an amendment or trying to make sure she can find a way to make a difference. I remember that first year of 1995 when she got here. She went up to Charlie Rangel and said: I want to know everything you knew about Barbara Jordan. Charlie said: Well, you did know Barbara, right? She said: Yes. I loved her and admired her, but you know what I don't know because you served with her, so tell me all about the way she was here and how she made a real difference. Then, she came over to me afterward and said: And I want you to stay here because I want you to tell me all about Mickey Leland. You served with him. You and Mickey were buddies, and you sat with him the night before he left to take that flight that he never came back from. I want to know what you talked about and what is going to happen now that he is gone and I am here. How do I find a way, like with Barbara Jordan, to make a real difference in this House? Her spirit was irrepressible. She had a personality that was all her own. The word was that witnesses coming before the Judiciary Committee didn't want to come before the Judiciary Committee if they were wrong because they knew, as a trained lawyer, she would find a way to pick them apart. She did so over and over again. She did it not for herself but to have the truth come out and to make sure that the testimony was something that people could build on and learn from. She worked so hard. I am looking at this white bouquet of flowers, and I almost picked it up and walked it over to that aisle, on the edge where, every year, every President that came down that aisle had to shake the hand, say hello to, and pay some homage to Sheila Jackson Lee. We loved her. We still love her, and we will always love her. She was a worker who made all of us around her work harder, and we are all so much better because of the fact that she served here. Madam Speaker, our dear friend, Don Payne, Jr., passed away a couple of months ago, and many of us went to Newark for the funeral. It was a tough loss, just like this is. I had served with his dad, so it was especially tough for me because his dad and I were buddies. I point now to Congressman Jackson of Illinois, who I said to that day: Thank you so much for taking care of Sheila. She could barely get up to Newark with us, but she cared so much about paying tribute and honor to someone she worked with and cared about that she found a way, barely walking, to get on that plane to go to that funeral and to come back. I commended Congressman Jackson for taking the time to do all that he could to make her trip better and to keep her safe from all that could have gone on, not so much on the trip but in terms of her health because we all knew that she was declining. We didn't know what was going on. I thank Jonathan for that. My thanks to all the members of the caucus who are here, all of whom have stories about Sheila and our love for her. Madam Speaker, I can say because I feel her spirit will remain in this place for a long, longtime to come. Every time somebody says Juneteenth, they are going to say Sheila Jackson Lee, or reparations, Sheila Jackson Lee. She would run behind us: Have you signed on to H.R. 40 yet? We would say yes. She would say: Go get me two others. Again, I thank my colleague so much for yielding. My thanks to all from the caucus who are here, and I thank Congresswoman Lee for reminding us of some stories that we had long since forgotten.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Madam Speaker, I thank Chair Roger Williams and Ranking Member Nydia Velazquez for their cooperation in getting this piece of legislation to the floor. This amendment represents, in many respects, the sort of amendments that are bipartisan that have come about under their leadership, first in this Congress and then in the previous Congress when their roles had been reversed. It is a good process to have, and I honestly hope that other committees can follow the example here. The U.S. Federal Government, in case people don't know, is the largest customer in the entire world. The government spends more than $690 billion every year on products and on services and is required by law to have those services meet the application, meet the solicitation, and then be considered properly. The government requires also by law that it gives equal consideration to businesses where applicable. Once an agency has evaluated and assessed their needs, acquisition personnel will post a solicitation on the Federal Government's System for Award Management. It is also commonly known as SAM.gov. That posting then is used to document and to track the eligibility of an individual or an entity to be able to receive Federal funds. Now, winning a contract can secure for a small business tens of thousands of dollars for their products or their services where applicable, which also results, obviously, in huge financial gains, but the problem here is that this is not a simple feat. Successfully securing a government contract requires fortitude and tenacity over and over again, day in and day out, as small businesses will need to do in order to be able to take advantage of that solicitation. Now, not only can it take a long time for a small business to win their first government contract, but it also requires a significant amount of financial resources. They have to be invested in the process. Some businesses in this country spend on average $80,000 to $130,000 just to be able to earn their first contract. They have to get the right consultants. They have to put together the right teams. They need the right expertise that goes above and beyond what their capabilities are, and it is work, work, work. Additionally, it can take small business owners up to 2 years to start making a return on that same investment, making the need for an adequate cash flow absolutely essential. You have to be able to ride that tide, as many small businesses will tell you, and cash flow is a huge part of that. Now, despite the prospective awardees' heavy lift, and it is a heavy lift, agencies on their own, unilaterally, without reason, can cancel the solicitation without ever disclosing why, leaving the small businessperson or the small minority business left on their own to recoup the money that they have put in and also being unable to bid right away on something else. It leaves entrepreneurs in the dark. It causes them to be depleted of their resources and absent of any guidance on a path moving forward. The government doesn't say we have taken your solicitation, here is what you have to do. They just say we have canceled the solicitation, and then the small business entity has to figure out what they do next after that large investment. Small business owners, in my opinion, deserve better allies in the Federal Government. That is why the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford) and I have put together in a bipartisan way the Transparency and Predictability in Small Business Opportunities Act. We think it is a remedy for a very serious problem. The act requires the Administrator of the Small Business Administration to issue regulations that would provide for the disclosure of additional information when a small business solicitation is canceled. In other words, if you are going to make a unilateral decision, you have to at least tell the small businesses who have invested money in trying to provide for that why you did it. We have a good SBA Administrator. I think that she just needs the right kind of language in a bill and the authority to be able to do just that. The bill would also require the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization to help small businesses seek additional opportunities if a solicitation that they bid on is arbitrarily and unilaterally canceled. It is my hope and the hope of the gentleman from Missouri as well that we are able to provide them with the opportunities they need to be able to continue to grow and develop their businesses and the opportunity to be successful rather than to be in a punitive situation where we offer bait and then snatch it back after businesses are, in fact, vested on a course of winning a contract. Small businesses, needless to say, really have been the driving force in our economy, and I know that Mr. Williams and Ms. Velazquez will agree. After all the hard work these small businesses do, they deserve the courtesy of disclosure from the Federal Government and its contracting agencies. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of this.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to announce my introduction of the Baltimore BRIDGE Relief Act. I thank the entire Maryland delegation for their united and unanimous cosponsorship of this bill. As most know, on March 26, early in the morning, our Nation experienced a terrible tragedy when a large cargo ship collided into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, leading to the tragic loss of six lives and contributing to a major disruption of the Nation's supply chain. With so much at stake, we must have a successful response to this American disaster. This bill is a step toward accomplishing everything we said we would do: 100 percent of the way, plain and simple. We have a long path ahead of us, and I, along with my colleagues from every corner of America, remain committed to doing what we need to do to move us along the path of recovery and toward rebuilding this bridge. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members of this body to join me in voting to pass the Baltimore BRIDGE Relief Act.

Mr. MFUME

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I want to do a couple of things here. Number one, I thank Speaker Johnson for the conversation that we had shortly after this bridge collapsed and for his full understanding of the impact on the Nation and why this is so very important that we, again, allow commerce to flow through that port. I thank Rosa DeLauro, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, and Hakeem Jeffries, our minority leader, for their understanding on this issue, particularly Leader Jeffries, who went above and beyond a commitment personally to try to get this thing done and to make sure that we did it together. I would be remiss if I did not thank Tom Cole, the new chair of the Appropriations Committee, who spoke with me just 2 days after this happened and who understands completely the economic impact that this poses for our Nation as well as to Members on both sides of the aisle as we try to find a way to make sure that we move forward. Mr. Speaker, let me be redundant and underscore the fact that this is one of the Nation's top ports. It is the largest estuary that it sits over, meaning the Chesapeake Bay and the Patapsco River, but the port itself is a significant contributor to our economy, and it is the number one port in terms of roll-on and roll-off of new automobiles. It is a great exporter of titanium, sugar, coal, and a number of other imports, as well as exports. I will also say it has been a pleasure working with our Governor; Mayor Brandon Scott of Baltimore; County Executive Johnnie O of Baltimore County; Bill Ferguson, the president of the senate in Maryland; and Adrienne Jones, the speaker of the house, who have pushed through emergency legislation to help us to assist all of the dock workers and small businesses that are affected and helping us to move toward some sort of resolution of this issue. I began my remarks by saying that we must not ever forget the human souls, the lives lost that day. Again, as we think about this well into the future, I hope that all of us remember that this was a bridge, but this was more than just a bridge. It became a graveyard also. So because of the suffering that these families have endured, I would ask everyone all over the Nation to join us in understanding that this is not a partisan issue, that we must find a way together to get through this, that we must protect our Nation's supply chains and all of the risk that it poses for consumers in our society, and we can do it together. There will be a process to determine the funding mechanisms and the funding ratios. That will all be a part of some of what the Appropriations Committee will do, I am sure, but more than anything else, this becomes a milestone. I hope that we look at it as a problem that occurred that was solved by the work, potential, and input of everybody who cared, no matter where, in fact, they were or are. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland, the former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives, for his comments, his friendship, and also for the effort he has put forward as a part of what we call Team Maryland, again, a bipartisan effort to correct this tragedy. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia).

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for his comments and to underscore what I said earlier and what was said by several other people, that this disaster is not a partisan disaster. It affects all of us in this country regardless of our political label. I commend the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris) for his steadfastness on this. I am going to take a few minutes to talk about several other Members on both sides of the aisle who have, through their example, demonstrated the best way to go about dealing with a disaster like that, and that is to do it in lockstep together. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the other gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). He is the former majority leader, and he is, for those who don't know, the dean of the Maryland delegation.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his words, and I thank him also for his service to this body for almost two decades. We wish him well as he goes forward. One thing we are all sure about is that his heart remains in Baltimore. Mr. Speaker, I yield to another gentleman from the State of Maryland (Mr. Harris), who is also a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and a Member whose entire district is the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the entire coastline. He has always worked diligently on behalf of issues affecting the bay.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments, for his leadership on this, and for his steadfastness as we all try to work together to move beyond this American disaster and to create in its place a new bridge, new lanes of commerce, and new opportunities economically for people who relied so much on that port and, by the way, on every port in this country. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ruppersberger), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ivey).

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Speaker Emerita both for her leadership in the greater San Francisco area and also for her love for the city of Baltimore. Both cities are very, very fortunate to have her. I can only say thanks to Speaker Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his interest, his work, and his dedication to this mission that is before all of us, to rebuild this bridge and open the lanes of commerce once again so that our Nation's economy is not affected in ways that would cause us unwanted and unnecessary harm. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Speaker Emerita of the United States House of Representatives. She is a native of Baltimore, the daughter of a mayor and the daughter of a congressperson, but a daughter of the city.

Mr. MFUME. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) whose district is miles from where this happened but who has been with us every step of the way. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes).