[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Con. Res. 238 Engrossed in House (EH)]
111th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. CON. RES. 238
_______________________________________________________________________
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Whereas there has been no war fought by or within the United States in which
Blacks did not participate, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil
War, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom,
and Operation Iraqi Freedom;
Whereas Frederick Douglass voiced his opinion in one of his autobiographies,
``Life and Times of Frederick Douglass'', writing, ``I * * * urged every
man who could, to enlist; to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his
shoulder, the star-spangled banner over his head,'' later remarking that
``there is no power on Earth which can deny that he has earned the right
to citizenship in the United States.'';
Whereas during the Civil War, Black soldiers, commonly referred to as the United
States Colored Troops, were treated as second-class citizens, the health
care and hospitals available to them were substandard, and they often
died from neglect of services that was supposed to be administered by
medical personnel;
Whereas Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter, members of the first
generation of freedom's children, founded the Niagara Movement in 1905;
Whereas in his book, ``Black Reconstruction in America'', published in 1935,
DuBois wrote that ``[n]othing else made Negro citizenship conceivable,
but the record of the Negro soldier as a fighter.'';
Whereas the 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hell-fighters, fought the
Germans during World War I as part of the French Army and served the
longest stretch in combat--191 days without replacement--without losing
a foot of ground or a man as prisoner;
Whereas at the end of the service of the 369th Infantry, the entire regiment
received the Croix de Guerre, which was France's highest military honor,
from a grateful French nation;
Whereas Alain Locke, the first black Rhodes Scholar, wrote in 1925 about a ``New
Negro'' who had returned from battle with a bold new spirit that helped
spark a new mood in the Black community;
Whereas in 1917, Charles Hamilton Houston encountered racism after entering
World War I as a commissioned first lieutenant in the segregated 17th
Provisional Training Regiment, later writing that ``I made up my mind
that if I got through this war I would study law and use my time
fighting for men who could not strike back.'';
Whereas Dorie Miller, a messman attendant in the Navy, was catapulted to
national hero status and an icon to generations, after displaying
heroism on board the USS West Virginia during the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941;
Whereas before becoming a famous baseball player, Jackie Robinson was court-
martialed in the Army for refusing to sit in the back of the bus in
1944, and when he was later acquitted, he wrote that ``[i]t was a small
victory, for I had learned that I was in two wars, one against the
foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.'';
Whereas the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black pilots, flew with
distinction during World War II under the command of Captain Benjamin O.
Davis, Jr., the highly decorated officer who served for more than 35
years and became the first Black general in the Air Force;
Whereas during World War II, the 6888 (known as the ``Six Triple Eights''), the
first all-woman Black Postal Battalion who served in England and then
France, were given the daunting task of clearing out a two-year backlog
of over 90,000 pieces of mail, succeeded in their mission, completed it
in three months, and went on to make a positive impact on racial
integration in the military;
Whereas during World War II, the Army's 92nd Infantry Division, better known as
the ``Buffalo Soldiers'', which traces its direct lineage back to the
9th and 10th Cavalry units from 1866 to the early 1890s, was the only
Black segregated unit to experience combat during the Italian campaign
of 1944-45 with several members later earning Medals of Honor for
bravery;
Whereas Reverend Benjamin Hooks, who served in the 92nd Division, found himself
in the humiliating position of guarding Italian prisoners of war who
were allowed to eat in restaurants that were off-limits to him;
Whereas even after President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 desegregating
the military on July 26, 1948, discrimination continued;
Whereas in 1946, when Charles and Medgar Evers tried to register to vote, they
were turned away at the polling station;
Whereas after serving overseas in the Army, Charles and Medgar Evers returned
home to Mississippi where, in 1952, they began to organize voter
registration drives for the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP);
Whereas Oliver L. Brown, a World War II Army veteran from Kansas, and Harry
Briggs, a World War II sailor from South Carolina, were the fathers of
two of the five named plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka and Briggs v. Elliott, the historic school desegregation cases of
1954;
Whereas the Black heroes and heroines of World War II and the Korean War, such
as Private Sarah Keys and Women's Army Corps (WAC) officer Dovey
Roundtree, won significant victories against discrimination in
interstate transportation in landmark civil rights cases, including Keys
v. Carolina Coach Company, which was decided in 1955, six days before
Rosa Parks' historic protest of Alabama's Jim Crow laws in Montgomery;
Whereas in his address at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., commented on the irony of Blacks fighting in Vietnam to
guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia while not enjoying the same rights
at home;
Whereas Black veterans who were in the forefront of the leadership of the Civil
Rights Movement, with their strong resolve to address the paradox of
military service abroad and the denial of basic rights at home, brought
deeper meaning to the word ``democracy'', and through their example,
transformed the face of the United States;
Whereas the Black veterans of the Nation's wars sowed the seeds for today's
bountiful harvest through the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the
latter-day Civil Rights Movement, all of which share a common ancestry
in the Civil War, without which there would be no Civil Rights Movement
and no equal rights for all Americans; and
Whereas today, Black veterans suffer at a disproportionate rate from chronic
illnesses and homelessness and are plagued by health disparities: Now,
therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),
That Congress recognizes--
(1) the difficult challenges Black veterans faced when
returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, their heroic
military sacrifices, and their patriotism in fighting for equal
rights and for the dignity of a people and a Nation; and
(2) the need for the Department of Veterans Affairs to
continue to work to eliminate any health and benefit
disparities for our Nation's minority veterans.
Passed the House of Representatives February 26, 2010.
Attest:
Clerk.
111th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. CON. RES. 238
_______________________________________________________________________
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Recognizing the difficult challenges Black veterans faced when
returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, their heroic military
sacrifices, and their patriotism in fighting for equal rights and for
the dignity of a people and a Nation.