HONORING MS. JOHNNIE BROOKS BOOKER ON THE OCCASION OF HER 85TH BIRTHDAY

On 2026-09-14, Representative Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (D-GA-2) delivered a floor speech titled "HONORING MS. JOHNNIE BROOKS BOOKER ON THE OCCASION OF HER 85TH BIRTHDAY" in the House.

HONORING MS. JOHNNIE BROOKS BOOKER ON THE OCCASION OF HER 85TH BIRTHDAY

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 144 (Monday, September 14, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 144 (Monday, September 14, 2026)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E910-E911] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HONORING MS. JOHNNIE BROOKS BOOKER ON THE OCCASION OF HER 85TH BIRTHDAY ______ HON. SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR. of georgia in the house of representatives Monday, September 14, 2026 Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a remarkable daughter of the State of Georgia, Ms. Johnnie Brooks Booker of Atlanta, on the occasion of her 85th birthday. A celebration of her birthday was held on Saturday, September 12, 2026, at the Whitley Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Speaker, Johnnie Brooks was born on July 31, 1941, in Forsyth, Georgia, to Willie Floyd Brooks and Lillian Goodwyne Brooks Graves. I would ask this House to sit with that date for a moment. Nineteen forty-one. In Georgia. A Black girl, born in a small middle Georgia town, into a state that had already written her ceiling before she drew her first breath--a state where she could not have been served at a lunch counter in her own hometown, could not have used the front door of most buildings on Main Street, and could not have expected the country of her birth to make room for her. Nobody asked that child what she intended to do about it. She told them anyway. She went to Hampton Institute in Virginia and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in social sciences and sociology. She went on to the Atlanta University School of Social Work--now Clark Atlanta University--and earned her Master of Social Work in community organization. And then, Mr. Speaker, she went to work, and she did not stop for sixty years. She began with the New York Department of Welfare. She taught in the Manpower Development and Training Program in Washington, D.C. and joined the D.C. Department of Rehabilitation in 1964. She served with the Neighborhood Youth Corps. She worked with the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, then the Western Regional Office of the National Urban League, and then the Urban League's Washington Bureau. She entered the federal service at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board as Director of Consumer Affairs and Civil Rights. In 1989 she was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1991, she joined the Resolution Trust Corporation as Vice President of the Division of Minority and Women`s Programs. When that agency closed its doors, she moved to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity, where she served until her retirement in 1996. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to notice something about that list. Consumer Affairs and Civil Rights. Minority and women's programs. Equal Opportunity. Community Organization. Look at every title she ever held. That woman spent her entire working life standing in doorways and holding them open for people who were never supposed to get through. Mr. Speaker, the late Shirley Chisholm sat in this very House, and she left behind a line that the women who came after her have carried like a lantern: ``if they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.'' Johnnie Brooks Booker heard that. But she was never once satisfied to bring a single chair for herself. She brought them by the truckload. She set them up around the table. She called in people whose names were nowhere on the invitation--and then she taught them how to sit there like they belonged, because they did. She was not finished. In 2001 she came home to Georgia and became the Global Director of Supplier Diversity at The Coca-Cola Company, where she served for a decade. In that role she built a mentoring program for minority- and women-owned business enterprises because she understood that a contract without capacity is a courtesy, and she was never interested in courtesies. She wanted those firms to be able to bid the next job, and the one after that, without her. Mr. Speaker, in 2007, came the moment I want this House to remember. When The World of Coca-Cola Museum was built in Atlanta--that great glass house where one of the most famous American companies on earth tells the story of itself--Johnnie Brooks Booker made certain that minority developers and minority contractors were in the room, on the plans, and on that job site. Think about what that means. A little girl born in Forsyth, Georgia, in 1941, who as a child that could not walk into a drugstore in her own town and sit down and order a CocaCola--that same woman, 66 years later, helped decide who would build the house that Coca-Cola tells its story in. Mr. Speaker, that is not irony. That is what a life of purpose looks like from the far end of it. She retired from Coca-Cola in 2012, at an age when most people are owed their rest, and promptly founded The Johnnie Booker Group, where she serves as President and Chief Executive Officer to this day. Her service has extended to the American Society for Public Administration, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, The Links, Incorporated, the National Council of Negro Women, the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Hampton University Alumni Association, the Utopian Literary Club, and Circle-Let's of Atlanta. She has served on the boards of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, Women in Housing and Finance, Women of Washington, the Delta Research and Educational Foundation--the philanthropic arm of her beloved sorority--and the Fort Valley State University Foundation--an institution in the district I am privileged to represent, and one more place where she invested herself in young people she would never meet. She has been recognized with two Congressional Resolutions of this House, named Hampton University Alumna of the Year in 2009, and honored with the Community Service Award of the Black Law Students Association at Quinnipiac University in 2022. In 2023, [[Page E911]] she sat for an oral history with The History Makers--so that her voice will still be telling this story long after all of us in this Chamber have finished ours. Mr. Speaker, she is the mother of S. Courtney Booker, III and the grandmother of Dalyn and Aiden. I would say this to those two grandchildren: the world will tell them a great many things about what they can and cannot become. Their grandmother has already proven every one of them wrong. They come from somebody. Mr. Speaker, on the 31st of July, Ms. Johnnie Brooks Booker turned 85 years old. She has lived long enough to see a great deal of what she fought for, and she is still at her desk. Georgia gave her to the Nation, and she has spent 85 years giving back more than she ever received. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian, and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in wishing a happy 85th birthday to Ms. Johnnie Brooks Booker of Atlanta, Georgia, in thanking her for a lifetime of extraordinary service to this country, and in wishing her continued health, joy, and many more years among the people who love her. ____________________