ASSOCIATE AG WEST DELIVERS REMARKS AT PROGRESSIVE NATIONAL BAPTIST CONVENTION

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 

Associate Attorney General Tony West Delivers Remarks at the Progressive National Baptist Convention

Fort Lauderdale, Florida ~ Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Dr. [Carroll] Baltimore, for that kind introduction.  I salute you for your leadership of this convention and I congratulate you on this successful convening.

I have to say, I feel very much at home here, being the great-grandson of two South Florida Baptist preachers – although clearly, the program organizers were unaware of my Baptist pedigree as they only allotted me 10 minutes to speak.

It is such an honor to address this convention.  I was thinking on the way down here about the living history that this convention represents: About the fact that this was the denominational home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; about how we cannot talk about the Civil Rights Movement and not in the same breath speak of this organization, and about the leadership of Dr. Taylor, Rev. Booth, Rev. Chambers and so many others.

And I thought about how much I owe to this convention, as an African-American man: too young to remember first-hand the Civil Rights Movement’s most dramatic, seminal moments; yet too old not to feel the weight of responsibility for preserving, protecting, defending and promoting the movement's legacy in the public service I am now privileged to perform.

We’re in a time when we're celebrating a number of significant anniversaries – milestones that make all the more salient the historic centrality of this great, Progressive National Baptist Convention:

Fifty years since they came by the hundreds of thousands to gather peacefully on the Washington Mall, marching for jobs and freedom;

Since college students, black and white, boarded buses in the North and rode them deep into the South, riding with the certainty of danger but the faith of Paul;

Since the ’64 Civil Rights Act and Mississippi’s “Freedom Summer.”

And as we think about the those anniversaries, we have reason to rejoice in the great progress forged by ordinary men and women in shattering boundaries once thought unbreakable – enormous change wrought in the short space of five decades.

And yet, I am struck by the fact that at the heart of what Dr. King, his contemporaries and this convention were grappling with back then remain, fundamentally, the same challenges facing us today:

How do we build a society that allows all people the freedom to realize fully their own potential?

How do we ensure that, in Dr. King’s words, “[l]aw and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice” and not as “dams that block the flow of social progress?”

How do we make certain that this bold experiment in self-government is inclusive, responsive and maintains its legitimacy in the eyes of those it serves?

The opening lines of our story as one nation begin with a promise:  a promise that we are all created equal.  And nowhere is this promise manifest more tangibly than in the right to vote.

That sacred franchise – the right to choose who will speak and act in our names; the right to express sovereignty over our government; a right that is, to paraphrase Lincoln, the foundation on which the temple of liberty is built because it protects all other rights – that right, more than any other, is what defines us as joint and equal members of this unique, democratic idea called the United States of America.

And next year, we’ll mark 50 years since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  You know, after President Lyndon signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, there were those – many of them his close allies – who told him to wait, to slow down; that it was too soon to start work on another major piece of civil rights legislation.

But President Johnson knew that 100 years after the franchise had been promised to African-Americans – a commitment forged by Civil War and consummated by constitutional amendment – Johnson knew that the time for waiting had run out.

Instead of waiting, Johnson acted, saying, “About this there can and should be no argument.  Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.”

So it is a sad irony that five decades later, we find ourselves working overtime to hold onto to that promise.  It is ironic that 50 years later, we are battling efforts that make it harder, not easier, for people to cast their votes.  It is ironic that in 2014, we must litigate against laws that impede voter registration that curtail democratic participation; or impose restrictive voter ID requirements that we know have a disproportionate effect on poor people and people of color, making it harder for them to exercise the franchise.

Now, I don’t want there to be any confusion about this so let me be clear: where there’s evidence of voter fraud, we won’t tolerate it.  Voter fraud undermines our democracy.  Nobody believes we should accept that.

But public policy studies from across the political spectrum come to the same conclusion that in-person voter fraud is extremely rare.  Too often, the fervor surrounding voter ID laws seems more like a solution in search of a problem.  And so we need to be mindful that “the real voter fraud,” as the president says, “is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud.”

The right to vote faces other challenges, as well.  Repeatedly, a bipartisan Congress of the United States reauthorized Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act – most recently in 2006 with unanimous support in the Senate and near-unanimous support in the House.  And repeatedly, Republican and Democratic Administrations used these provisions to secure the franchise for all American citizens.

Yet notwithstanding this bipartisan history, last year we lost an important tool in our anti-discrimination toolbox when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act.

So, on the eve of the 50 th anniversary of the ’65 Voting Rights Act – in the middle of a season where we remember Mississippi’s “Freedom Summer” – we know that our work is far from done.  We know that the perennial lesson of history is that the triumphs won by Dr. King, by Fannie Lou Hamer, by the Progressive National Baptist Convention and by so many others – those triumphs must be won anew in this generation, because the hard reality is that the right to vote faces threats today as stark and serious and urgent as any it faced 50 years ago.

And that is why we must continue to act.  That is why protecting the fundamental right to vote for all Americans remains one of the Justice Department’s highest priorities.  Because standing by as the voices of some Americans are shut out of the democratic process is simply not an option.

So at the Department of Justice, we are continuing to monitor jurisdictions around the country, and we're watching for changes in their voting laws that may hamper voting rights.

Our message is unequivocal: we will use every legal tool that remains available to us, against any jurisdiction that seeks to hinder eligible citizens’ full and free right to vote.

When we see something that causes us concern, we won't hesitate to make it plain.  In Texas, we have gone to court to challenge a voter ID law and a congressional redistricting map that we contend discriminate against Latino voters.  In North Carolina, we have sued the state over discriminatory voting laws that restrict access to the polling place and make it harder for voters to case their ballots.

Last week, we submitted filings in voting rights cases in two different states: Wisconsin and Ohio.  In Wisconsin, we're contending that the federal judge there got it right when she struck down Wisconsin’s strict photo voter ID requirement due to its adverse effects on minority voters under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

In Ohio, in a case challenging that state’s law curtailing early voting and same-day registration, we filed a statement in support of the NAACP's position, arguing that Ohio has misinterpreted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in defending its law.

And while we will continue to use all the legal authority we have to protect vigorously the right to vote, the fact is there is no substitute – as the president has made clear – for strong congressional action which guarantees that every American has equal access to the polls.  That is why the Justice Department is providing assistance to Congress to formulate potential legislative proposals to address voting rights discrimination.

And, importantly, this work is bipartisan, because the fundamental right to vote must be above party or partisanship – too much hard work has been done, too much blood has been shed, too many lives lost and voices silenced for this to be simply about partisan politics.

No, this is about something much deeper, much more important.  We know what this is about.  It’s about who we are as a nation – who we are as a free and fair democratic society.

Because if a government of, by and for the people means anything at all, it means that a ballot has the power to give equal voice to the high and the low; the weak and the strong; those at the bottom as well as the top.  It means that in the polling place, the line is just as long for the richest among us as it is for those who often work the hardest but have the least.

And just as in 1965, those of us in the federal government – we cannot win this battle alone.  We will need your help.  We will need your hands.  We will need your voices to help us walk and not grow faint; to push us on and not get discouraged; to lift us up and carry us forward.  We will need your leadership to help us pull our nation out of its acquiescence and, in the proud tradition of this great convention, push it into action once again.

Thank you and God bless you.

AG HOLDER'S REMARK'S ON 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 

Attorney General Holder Delivers Remarks at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund for the 60th Anniversary of Brown V. Board of Education

~ Friday, May 16, 2014

Thank you, President [Sherrilyn] Ifill, for those kind words – and thank you all for such a warm welcome.  It’s a pleasure to be here today.  And it’s a privilege to join dedicated public servants like Governor [Deval] Patrick and Governor [Doug] Wilder – along with trailblazers like Charlayne Hunter-Gault – in celebrating the work of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; in commemorating the victory this organization helped to secure 60 years ago tomorrow; and in recommitting ourselves to the critical work that still lies before us.

 I’d like to thank our hosts at the National Press Club, and every member and supporter of LDF, for making this important observance possible.  It’s a tremendous honor to take part in this celebration – and to stand with lawyers who participated in the Brown case; the families of courageous plaintiffs who made this landmark decision possible; and with Mrs. Cissy Marshall, wife of the late Thurgood Marshall – one of our nation’s greatest civil rights pioneers – who helped found this organization nearly three quarters of a century ago.

Since 1940, LDF has performed critical work to rally Americans from all backgrounds to the unifying cause of justice – standing on the front lines of our fight to guarantee security, advance opportunity, and ensure equal treatment under law.  Your enduring legacy is written not only in the words of seminal legal opinions, but in the remarkable, once-unimaginable progress that so many of us have witnessed even within our own lifetimes.  The fact that I serve in an administration led by another African American bears witness to that progress.  Your actions, alongside those of countless citizens whose names may be unknown to us – but whose contributions and sacrifices endure – have forever altered the course of our great nation's history.

 Decades ago, brave individuals from across the country – sustained by the strength of their convictions, fueled by their desire for change, and represented by lawyers from this eminent organization – including visionary attorneys like Thurgood Marshall, Robert Carter, and Jack Greenberg – embarked on a dangerous, long and grueling march that culminated on May 17, 1954, at the United States Supreme Court.

It was a march that led through difficult and uncertain terrain – from the injustice of Plessy v. Ferguson to the dark days of Jim Crow and slavery by another name; from the discrimination and violence and the strange fruit that ultimately gave rise to a unified Civil Rights Movement and to the founding and growth of LDF.  It was a march that tested the soul of this country – and questioned, as President Abraham Lincoln once asked, whether a nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal “could long endure.”  And it was a march that was immeasurably strengthened by the transformative power of a single Court decision, when nine jurists came together – led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, with the eyes of the world upon them – to unanimously declare that separate was inherently unequal.

I was just three years old in 1954, when Brown was decided.  Thanks to some of the pioneers in this room, my generation was the first to grow up in a world in which “separate but equal” was no longer the law of the land.  Even as a child growing up in New York City, I understood, as I learned about the decision, that its impact was truly groundbreaking – bringing the law in line with the fundamental truth of the equality of our humanity.

Yet, although Brown marked a major victory, like anyone old enough to remember the turbulence of the 1960s, I also knew – and saw firsthand – that this country wouldn’t automatically translate the words of Brown into substantive change.  The integration of our schools – a process that was halting, confrontational, and at times even bloody – did not by itself put an end to the beliefs and attitudes that had given rise to the underlying inequity in the first place.  The outlawing of institutional segregation did not by itself soften the enmity – and alleviate the vicious bias – that had been directed against African-American people and communities for generations.  And the rejection, in its clearest form by our highest court, of legal discrimination could not – by itself – wash away the hostility that would, for years, fuel new, perversely innovative attempts to keep “separate but equal” in place.

These markers of progress could not forestall the “Massive Resistance” policies that followed in states across the country, in which public schools were closed and private academies were opened for white children only.  They could not avert the protests that greeted the Little Rock Nine – brave young students who required the protection of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to enroll in an all-white high school.  And they could not prevent Alabama Governor George Wallace from making his infamous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”  in 1963 – nine years after Brown – when two courageous African-American students – one of whom, Vivian Malone, would much later become my sister-in-law – attempted to register for classes at the University of Alabama.

But thanks to Brown – and to the developments that followed – on the day when Vivian and her classmate James Hood walked into that university, they were protected not only by the power of their convictions; not only by the strength of the National Guard and the authority of the United States Department of Justice; but by the force of binding law. When those nine students entered Little Rock Central High School, they were supported by all nine members of a resolute Supreme Court.  And when millions of civil rights advocates and supporters began to rally, to march, to stand up – and even to sit in – in order to eradicate the discrimination they continued to face in schools and other public accommodations, they stood not only on the side of equality – and on the side of that which was right – but on the side of settled justice.

This was the sea change that Brown v. Board of Education signaled.  And this was the progress it made possible.  It did not instantaneously – or painlessly – tear down the walls that divided so much of the nation.  But it did unlock the gates.  And it continues to guide LDF’s work, and the Justice Department’s civil rights enforcement efforts, as we work to end the divisions and disparities that persist even today.  After all, as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said recently – in an insightful dissent in the Michigan college admissions case – we must not “wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. …The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.”  And, I would add, to act, to act, to eradicate the existence of still too persistent inequalities.

I want to assure you – as we mark this historic anniversary – that my colleagues and I remain as committed to this cause as ever before.  While the number of school districts that remain under desegregation court orders has decreased significantly in just the past decade, the Department continues to actively enforce and monitor nearly 200 desegregation cases where school districts have not yet fulfilled their legal obligation to eliminate segregation “root and branch.”  In those cases, we work to ensure that all students have the building blocks of educational success – from access to advanced placement classes, to facilities without crumbling walls and old technology, to safe and positive learning environments.   We’re partnering with the Department of Education to reform school discipline policies that fuel the “school-to-prison pipeline” – and that have resulted in students of color facing suspensions and expulsions at a rate three times higher than that of their white peers.  And we are moving in a variety of ways to dismantle racial barriers and promote inclusion, from America’s classrooms, to our boardrooms, to our voting booths – and far beyond.

So long as I have the privilege of serving as Attorney General of the United States, this Justice Department will never stop working to expand the promise of a nation where everyone has the same opportunity to grow, to contribute, and to succeed.  By calling for new voting protections – and by challenging unjust restrictions that discriminate against vulnerable populations or communities of color – we’ll keep striving to ensure the free exercise of every citizen’s most fundamental rights.  By leading implementation of another landmark Supreme Court ruling – in United States v. Windsor – we’ll ensure that lawfully married same-sex couples can receive the federal benefits and protections they deserve.  And by fighting for comprehensive immigration reform – that includes an earned path to citizenship, so that men and women who are Americans in everything but name can step out of the shadows and take their place in society – we’ll make certain that children who have always called America home can build bright futures in, and enrich, the country they love without fear.

 In these and other efforts, there are undoubtedly difficult times ahead.  Challenges, old and new, remain before us.  There are too many wedded to the past and who irrationally fear the new America that is emerging.  They misconstrue our past: America has been at its best when we have acted to embrace, and make positive, the changes we have been forced to confront.  And so it must be again.

Government will never be able to surmount the obstacles we face on its own.  But, especially on days like today, I am reminded of the extraordinary courage that – since 1940 – has led seemingly-ordinary citizens and LDF leaders to stand together, to transform the power of individual voices into the strength of collective action, and to bring about historic changes like the one we gather to celebrate: changes that pull this nation closer to its founding promise.  Changes that make real the blessings of our Constitution.  And changes that codify self-evident truths into settled law.

As I look around this room, and with great faith in the American people, I cannot help but feel optimistic about our ability to build on the progress we celebrate this week.  And I have no doubt that, with your continued leadership, with your boundless passion, and with your unyielding courage, we can continue the legacy that’s been entrusted to us.  We can extend the promise that Brown, and those who made it possible, worked so hard to secure.  And we can build that more just society that everyone in this nation deserves.

 Thank you.