[Congressional Bills 109th Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] [H. Res. 867 Introduced in House (IH)] 109th CONGRESS 2d Session H. RES. 867 Honoring the life and accomplishments of James Cameron. _______________________________________________________________________ IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES June 14, 2006 Ms. Moore of Wisconsin (for herself, Mr. Abercrombie, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Berman, Mr. Blumenauer, Mr. Brown of Ohio, Ms. Bordallo, Ms. Carson, Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Clyburn, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Crowley, Mr. Cummings, Ms. DeGette, Mr. Dingell, Mr. Engel, Mr. Fattah, Mr. Ford, Mr. Frank of Massachusetts, Mr. Al Green of Texas, Mr. Green of Wisconsin, Mr. Grijalva, Mr. Gutierrez, Mr. Hastings of Florida, Mr. Hayworth, Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Hyde, Mr. Jackson of Illinois, Mr. Jefferson, Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, Ms. Kaptur, Mr. Kennedy of Rhode Island, Ms. Kilpatrick of Michigan, Mr. Kind, Mr. Kucinich, Mr. Lantos, Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas, Ms. Lee, Mr. Lewis of Georgia, Mrs. Maloney, Ms. Matsui, Mr. Meeks of New York, Mr. Meek of Florida, Mr. Melancon, Mrs. McCarthy, Ms. McCollum of Minnesota, Mr. McDermott, Ms. McKinney, Mr. McNulty, Mr. George Miller of California, Mr. Murtha, Mr. Nadler, Mr. Ney, Mr. Oberstar, Mr. Obey, Mr. Owens, Mr. Pascrell, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Petri, Mr. Rangel, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, Mr. Rothman, Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin, Ms. Loretta Sanchez of California, Ms. Schakowsky, Mr. Scott of Virginia, Mr. Scott of Georgia, Mr. Sensenbrenner, Ms. Slaughter, Mr. Snyder, Ms. Solis, Mr. Thompson of Mississippi, Mr. Towns, Mrs. Jones of Ohio, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Ms. Waters, Ms. Watson, Mr. Watt, Mr. Waxman, Mr. Weiner, Mr. Wexler, Mr. Wolf, Ms. Woolsey, Mr. Wynn, Mr. Bishop of Georgia, Mr. Butterfield, Mr. Clay, Mr. Davis of Alabama, Mr. Davis of Illinois, Ms. Norton, Mr. Payne, and Mr. Rush) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Government Reform _______________________________________________________________________ RESOLUTION Honoring the life and accomplishments of James Cameron. Whereas James Cameron founded America's Black Holocaust Museum (the Museum) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the only memorial in the United States to victims of lynching and racial violence; Whereas Mr. Cameron was the last living survivor of a lynching until his death on June 11, 2006, at age 92; Whereas the Senate recognized Mr. Cameron as the Nation's oldest living lynching victim in June 2005 and formally apologized for its failure to outlaw lynching, which killed more than 4,700 people from 1882 to 1968, three- fourths of whom were black; Whereas seven United States Presidents called for lynching to be outlawed, and the House of Representatives passed bans three times in the early twentieth century, only to have the Senate kill each of them with a filibuster, one that lasted six weeks; Whereas in Marion, Indiana in 1930, when he was 16 years old, Mr. Cameron and two friends, Abe Smith (age 19) and Tommy Shipp (age 18), were falsely accused of killing a white man and raping his girlfriend; Whereas after the arrest of the three men, a mob broke into the jail where they were being held and tried to lynch them; Whereas the mob lynched Mr. Smith and Mr. Shipp but miraculously spared Mr. Cameron's life; Whereas Mr. Cameron was beaten into signing a false confession, was convicted in 1931, and was paroled in 1935; Whereas the governor of Indiana pardoned Mr. Cameron in 1993 and apologized to him; Whereas Mr. Cameron promoted civil and social justice issues and founded three NAACP chapters in Indiana during the 1940s; Whereas James Cameron served as the Indiana State Director of Civil Liberties from 1942 to 1950, and he investigated over 25 cases involving civil rights violations; Whereas Mr. Cameron relocated to Wisconsin after receiving many death threats, but he continued civil rights work and played a role in protests to end segregated housing in Milwaukee; Whereas in 1983, after failing to find a publisher for the book he began writing in prison, Mr. Cameron took out a second mortgage on his home to publish A Time of Terror, his autobiographical account of the events surrounding his arrest in 1930; Whereas Mr. Cameron founded America's Black Holocaust Museum in 1988 in order to preserve the history of lynching in the United States and to recognize the struggle of black people for equality; Whereas the Museum contains the Nation's foremost collection of lynching images, both photographs and postcards, that document the heinous practice of lynching in the United States; Whereas the Museum performs a critical role by exposing this painful, dark, and ugly practice in the Nation's history, so that knowledge can be used to promote understanding and to counter racism, fear, and violence; Whereas the Museum also documents the history of the African-American experience from slavery to the civil rights movement to the present day; and Whereas the Museum exists to educate the public about injustices suffered by people of African-American heritage, and to provide visitors with an opportunity to rethink assumptions about race and racism: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives honors and celebrates the life and accomplishments of James Cameron and expresses condolences at his passing. <all>