BLACK HISTORY: STOLEN LEGACIES

On 2026-02-12, Representative Al Green (D-TX-9) delivered a floor speech titled "BLACK HISTORY: STOLEN LEGACIES" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered civil rights.

BLACK HISTORY: STOLEN LEGACIES

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 30 (Thursday, February 12, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 30 (Thursday, February 12, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2211-H2215] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] BLACK HISTORY: STOLEN LEGACIES (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Green of Texas was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.) Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, a proud, liberated, unbought, unbossed, and unafraid Democrat. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because this is Black History Month, and I have been accorded the honor of presenting annually the original Black history resolution. I am proud to do this in concert with a great organization. This organization has been bearing the torch, carrying the torch--the flame--of Black history now for so many years, founded by the Honorable Carter G. Woodson, who is widely known as the person who established this notion of a Black History Week, Black History Month. So I am [[Page H2212]] proud to recognize this organization. The organization is the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. This is the preeminent organization of its kind. It is the leader of the pack when it comes to Black history, and I am proud to be associated with them and proud to tell you that this year, for our Black History Month, there is a theme: A Century of Black History Commemorations. A century, 100 years. Today, I have chosen the topic, one that I think embraces something that is a little bit more contemporary and something that gives us reason to understand why we have to celebrate Black history. The topic is Black History: Stolen Legacies. Stolen legacies. Black History: Stolen Legacies. Mr. Speaker, fear not, because I want you to understand that I understand that this theme could be applicable to people of color in this country. It could be applicable to persons who are Latinos. It could be applicable to people who are Asians because the complete history of the country has not been properly documented and recorded. However, since it is Black History Month, I think it appropriate that I take up the cause and explain it as it relates to Black History Month. Before I go on, I think I should remind people that I am also the same Al Green who has been censured. Censured, but not silenced. Censured, but not silenced. I am proud today to take up this cause of Black history in Black History Month. Mr. Speaker, in speaking of legacies that have been stolen, we annually honor General Gordon Granger for going into Galveston and informing the enslaved persons there that the Emancipation Proclamation applied to them and that they were free people, liberated people. When we do this, however, we do not acknowledge the people who made it possible for General Gordon Granger to go to Galveston. These persons were members of the 25th Army Corps, approximately 1,000 persons of African ancestry who went to Galveston prior to Gordon Granger. They made it possible for Gordon Granger to stand in Galveston and deliver general order No. 3. These were the persons who ran the Confederates all the way to the Mexican border--legacies stolen because they have literally been minimized and had their histories somehow sanitized. Today, we want to make sure that we talk about these persons whose legacies have been stolen: 25th Army Corps. Let's bring this forward to the civil rights movement. In the civil rights movement, we honor--and we should honor--Rosa Parks, a Black woman who took her seat on a bus in a racist southern town. When she took that seat, she ignited a spark that started the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks should be honored for what she did. She was incarcerated for what she did. She should be honored, and we do honor her. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the legacy is incomplete because the history of this has not been completely told. If the true history is told, you have to mention Claudette Colvin-- Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old high school student, member of the NAACP. Claudette Colvin, she is a person who, 9 months prior to Rosa Parks taking that seat, did the same thing and was arrested. Legacy stolen, legacy denied. Claudette Colvin, not only did she go to jail and suffer the same indignation and humiliation as the Honorable Rosa Parks, but she did something else. She filed a lawsuit. She was a plaintiff in the lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. This is the lawsuit that brought the Montgomery bus boycott to a legal end because it was under the pen of the Honorable Frank M. Johnson, Jr., a Federal district court judge, who ordered that that bus line be integrated and no longer segregated. This was the dispute that took place when Dr. King was promoted to the leadership of the civil rights movement. This is where he led the people in this bus boycott to make sure that, at some point, Black people could sit on any seat on the bus that they chose to, because they couldn't. You could take a seat on the front or somewhere near the front, and people could simply say: Move back. There is a White person who needs your seat. Then you move back, and if another came on: Move back. There is another White person who needs your seat. This is true history. This is the history that is untold. So Dr. King led the boycott. Rosa Parks started the initiative, but it was Claudette Colvin who took the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, the lawsuit filed that eventually caused a judge, Frank M. Johnson, Jr., to rule that that line had to be desegregated. Claudette Colvin has been denied her place in history. Very little is said about her. {time} 1210 Now, I would like to contemporize, and this is going to give people an understanding as to this pattern of denying Black people their proper place in history, this pattern of stealing legacies, of whitewashing history as it relates to Black people--and it happens to people of color, not just Black people--and people of color it has happened to in this country. So, let's now contemporize as it relates to Black history and talk about something that happened in the State of Texas. We have a President of the United States who concluded that he had to have five more seats for the Republican side in Congress, five more seats to hold on to power, five more seats to continue to be the reckless, ruthless, lawless President that he is, five more seats. Because if he loses the House, he loses his ability to do many of the things that the House can constrain him and prevent him from doing, because the House controls the purse strings. He said: I want five seats. Four of the five that he actually identified were minority coalition seats, where minority people were electing the persons of their choice, and they were electing minority people. Well, he wanted five, four of the five being these seats that could elect minority people, minority people coalescing to elect people, a legitimate thing for people to do. Well, in so doing, he ordered the Governor to do this. The Governor got with the attorney general. The two of them worked it out such that seats were taken in Texas. I am just going to focus on one of them. In Houston, Texas, we had the 18th Congressional District, historic as it is called quite often-- and I concur with the persons who would call it such; the historic 18th Congressional District--the 18th Congressional District, the district of Barbara Jordan, the district that had the great Craig Washington, Mickey Leland, Sheila Jackson Lee, Sylvester Turner, the 18th Congressional District, a historic Congressional District. The 18th Congressional District was adjacent to the Ninth Congressional District. We will call it, for our purposes today, the old 18th Congressional District, and you will understand better why in just a moment, located adjacent to the Ninth Congressional District. In fact, if you look north and south, the 18th was at the top, and the Ninth was under the 18th. The Ninth Congressional District was one that elected a person of color, as well. The President and the Governor decided that they would do something called crack. This is where you break a district, and then you pack-- you take it and push the persons in those two districts together, but in so doing, you eliminate a district. In this case, that is what they did. So they cracked, and they packed. They stacked. They put the Ninth and the 18th together. When they put the Ninth and the 18th together, they eliminated the possibility for a person of color to be elected in the Ninth District by moving the lines for it over to another area. Now, I shouldn't say ``eliminate.'' Anything can happen. My belief is that there are capable, competent, and qualified people running, but the prognostication is that the configuration of it in terms of the numbers is likely to elect a conservative person, probably a very conservative person. My hope is that won't happen. In any event, coming back to the Ninth and the 18th, when they combined these two districts, they eliminated the possibility for the people of these two districts to have two Representatives in Congress. They eliminated that possibility, and they made it possible for only one to come from these two districts, only one person [[Page H2213]] from the 18th and the Ninth, only one. When they combined them such that only one person could be elected from the two, that eliminated the possibility of another minority person being elected. Historically, a Black person has represented the Ninth, and Black people have represented the 18th in Congress. When this was done, if you look at it just numerically, the people of the Ninth are losing a Representative if you look at numbers, but if you look at it deeply, within what happened, they put more of the people from the Ninth District in this new 18th than from the old 18th District. Approximately two-thirds of the people in this Ninth District are in the new 18th District. Now, you have