VIOLATIONS OF VOTING RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE OF WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A.

UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

 

Prepared by Timothy Cooper, Executive Director, Democracy First,

  and submitted to UN Committee on the Elimination of All

Forms of Racial Discrimination

 

1. SUMMARY STATEMENT

 

For over 200 years, the United States government has continuously denied citizens of Washington, D.C. the right to equal participation in their own national legislature through duly elected representatives.  Pursuant to provisions of the U.S. Constitution which grant Congress plenary authority over the District of Columbia, Congress has the legislative authority to enfranchise the people of the capital city, but has failed to do so, despite repeated attempts on the part of the citizenry to win the right to vote. The District of Columbia is the only political jurisdiction in the continental United States that is deprived Congressional voting rights, and the nearly 600,000 D.C. residents are the only U.S. taxpaying citizens who do not enjoy equal suffrage in their national legislature. Significantly, the District’s population is 67% African-American and 8% Latino. Thus, 75% of the local inhabitants are minorities.  Moreover, D.C. residents are also denied the right to full self-government-- a fundamental right possessed by all other American citizens. The denial of these two essential rights-- equal suffrage and self-government-- represent de facto human rights violations under the nondiscrimination, equal protection and political participation provisions of the International Convention On The Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. ("Convention").

 

II. ALL DOMESTIC LEGAL REMEDIES ARE INADEQUATE AND INEFFECTIVE

 

         Under Article 1 and the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, only “the people of the several states” are entitled to voting Congressional representation. Further, under Article 1, Section 2, Clause 17 of the constitution, Congress has plenary authority over the District in “all cases whatsoever”. Thus, any legal challenges to the voting status of District residents, who live not in a state, but in a separate and distinct federal enclave which comprises the nation’s capital, are legally denied representation in Congress and full self-government.^[1]

Though the Congress is empowered to grant District residents full voting rights, it has not chosen to do in nearly 200 years. Because the plain language of the constitution proscribes those American citizens entitled to Congressional representation, any attempt to remedy the political status of D.C. residents through the domestic courts requires that they declare provisions of the constitution unconstitutional. In any event, no court can compel the Congress to amendment the constitution or pass statehood legislation, which would affect the grant of these fundamental voting rights. Under the U.S. constitution, the status of the District is essentially a political question to be determined at the sole discretion of the U.S. Congress under its plenary authority over the District of Columbia.

 

III. ALL LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES HAVE FAILED TO REMEDY COVENANT VIOLATIONS

 

         Every previous political initiative undertaken to alter the voting status of D.C. residents has ended in failure. In the 1970s, Congress passed a constitutional amendment that would have granted D.C. residents full Congressional representation. While the amendment passed the Congress, it later failed to generate the requisite support of the country’s state legislatures for final ratification. Later, in 1993, a statehood bill was introduced in the House of Representatives. A grant of statehood would have guaranteed D.C. residents equal Congressional representation and full self-government. However, the legislation was soundly defeated in the House, and was never brought up for a vote in the U.S. Senate.

 

IV. BACKGROUND

 

Since the creation of the District of Columbia under the Organic Act in 1801, residents have never enjoyed full voting representation in their national legislature; they have been continually denied the right to vote in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, unlike all other U.S. citizens in each of the fifty states. In 1970, D.C. residents were granted a “non-voting” delegate to the House of Representatives, but the delegate could only vote in committee, and not for the passage of any final legislation. In 1993, the D.C. Delegate was granted a conditional vote in the Committee of the Whole through a change in the House of Representatives rules; however, because it would be unconstitutional to grant the D.C. delegate a vote in the House, this vote was subject to a so-called “savings clause”, which disallowed the delegate voting in the Committee of the Whole in the event the delegate’s vote would cast a deciding vote on any legislation. In 1994, the Congress rescinded even this limited right to vote, thus returning the D.C. delegate to a non-voting status.

 

Moreover, as noted above, District residents have never enjoyed the right to full self-government, a right otherwise guaranteed to every other U.S. citizen under Article 4 of the U.S. Constitution.    D.C. residents were granted a limited degree of self-government in 1974, subject to Congress’s oversight of its local budgets and legislation.  But in 1997, Congress stripped virtually all the political powers of the District’s elected officials, vesting legal authority in the hands of an unelected “Control Board”, which is answerable only to Congress, and not to the people of the District of Columbia. In 1999, much of the local legislative authority, subject to the veto authority of Congress, was returned to the Mayor and the City Council, but DC residents continue to be deprived of any voting participation in their national legislature. The fact that the District’s 75% African-American minority population is prohibited from enjoying these basic rights violates Articles 2 and 5 of the Convention.

 

V. APPLICABLE COVENANT PROVISIONS WHICH HAVE BEEN VIOLATED UNDER THE COVENANT

 

Article 2 of the Convention provides that "[s]tate Parties condemn racial discrimination and undertake to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms....” Article 1 of the Convention stipulates that “the term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.”

 

Article 2(a) of the Convention provides that “[e]ach State Party undertakes to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation.”

 

Article 5 of the Convention provides that “[i]n compliance with the fundamental obligations laid down in article 2 of this Convention, States Parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its form and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights:

 

(a) The right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice;

 

(c) Political rights, in particular the rights to participate in elections-- to vote and to stand for election-- on the basis of universal and equal suffrage, to take part in the Government as well as in the conduct of public affairs at any level and to have equal access to public service.” (Emphasis added.)

 

It should be noted that the United States Senate, in its Resolution of November, 1994, took no reservations regarding Articles 2 and 5 of the Convention.

 

VI. POLITICS AND RACE PLAY A ROLE IN THE DENIAL OF VOTING RIGHTS TO D.C. RESIDENTS

 

As noted above, District residents have never enjoyed voting representation in either houses of the United States Congress. Residents of each of the fifty states are represented by at least one voting member in the House of Representatives, and two voting members in the United States Senate. No other taxpaying U.S. citizens are subject to this arbitrary denial of their fundamental right to vote. Historically, Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats in Congress have studiously blocked all attempts to grant full political rights to D.C. residents. In light of the fact that the District’s population is 67% African‑American and 8% Latino population, and supports generally liberal, Democratic candidates in both presidential and local elections, it is clear that racial and partisan politics play a significant role in Congress’s continuing denial of their right equal political participation.  However, notwithstanding the reasons for Congress’s continuing denial of D.C. voting rights, the effect of U.S. policy towards the District is to impair the “recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms” guaranteed under the Convention.

 

There are no other constitutions in all of the Americas in which residents of the national capital are denied full voting rights in their national legislature.

 

VII. THERE IS NO LEGITIMATE OBJECTIVE SERVED TO JUSTIFY THE CONTINUING DENIAL OF BASIC VOTING RIGHTS AND SELF-GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE OF WASHINGTON, D.C.

 

The U.S. government maintains that the unequal political status of District residents can be rationally related to a legitimate objective.  According to the European Court of Human Rights, ruling in the Belgium Linguistic Case, “the principle of equality of treatment is violated if the difference in treatment is not justified on objective and reasonable grounds, or if the means employed do not stand in reasonable proportion to the end pursued.” The court has also declared that “a legitimate distinction can turn into a wrongful discrimination having survived the achievement of its initial aim.”

 

In the U.S. government’s “Initial Report of the United States of America to the U.N. Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (at pg. 193), the government maintains that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned the District as a separate enclave, "apart from the influence of any state government and responsible to the federal government alone."  The report quotes from The Federalist, No. 43, 289 (J. Madison) (J. Cooke, ed. 1961): "A dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the Government for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence...."

 

By reference, United States government suggests that the minority populations of the District of Columbia may, in fact, pose a potential security threat to the Congress, and therefore they should continue to be denied full voting rights in Congress.  Moreover, the government appears to be inferring that if D.C. residents were granted equal rights under law, they might exert undue influence over Congress by virtue of their close proximity to Congress.

 

200 years ago, when the fledgling U.S. government was dependent upon the state militia for its physical safety and security, a temporary, rational basis for the deprivation of equal rights to the District’s population may have been arguable. But today, in an era when the federal government is wholly capable of protecting Congress, and the interests of the nation as a whole, the US government's current justification cannot possibly be taken seriously. Moreover, in light of modern-day communications and transportation, it is disingenuous to claim that the residents of the District would enjoy an unfair advantage influencing the legislative affairs of Congress by virtue of their proximity to Congress. On the contrary, D.C. residents would enjoy no more influence on the legislative agenda of Congress than the fully enfranchised residents of Maryland and Virginia, living, as they do, within a mile or two of the Capitol.

 

Clearly, in this day and age, legislative influence is no longer controlled by geography. Influence in and access to Congress is facilitated by a broad array of modern technology, including fax machines, telephones, and e-mail. And transportation telescopes the time it takes to travel from one end of the country to another. Clearly then, the U.S. justification for the continuing denial of equal voting rights and full self-government to District residents “is not justified on objective and reasonable grounds.” Moreover, it is manifestly apparent that the original “ legitimate distinction” has turned into a wrongful discrimination “having survived the achievement of its initial aim.”

 

VIII. THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE AND THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS HAVE ALREADY IMPLIED THAT THE  LACK OF VOTING RIGHTS FOR DC RESIDENTS MAY, IN FACT, CONSTITUTE CONTINUING VIOLATIONS OF THE CONVENTION

 

In March, 1995, the U.N. Human Rights Committee expressed concern about the disenfranchisement of D.C. residents, raising the issue of U.S. compliance with provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 25 of the Covenant, which mirrors the language of Article 5 of the Convention, states, among other things, that “[e]very citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions....: (a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives; (b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.... [and] (c) To have access, on general terms of equality, to public service in his country.”

 

In August, 1996, The U.N. Human Rights Committee more fully defined the human rights referred to in Article 25 of the International Covenant, issuing General Comment 25. General Comment 25 asserts the right of every citizen to take part in the “formulation and implementation of policy at international, national, regional and local levels.”  Further, it maintains that a citizen’s right to take part in the conduct of public affairs “relates to the exercise of political power” in the legislative branch of national government, and that “[w]here citizens participate in the conduct of public affairs through freely chosen representatives, it is implicit.... that those representatives do in fact exercise governmental power.”

 

With the issuance of General Comment 25, the U.N. Human Rights Committee specifically defines the political status of D.C. citizens as a direct violation of Article 25 of the International Covenant. As with Article 2 and 5 of the Convention, the U.S. Senate also took no reservation to Article 25 of the Covenant.

 

Moreover, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, under the auspices of the Organization of American States, continues its investigation of de facto human rights violations taking place in the District of Columbia.  Under Articles 2 and 20 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which defines the human rights referred to in the OAS Charter, all people are guaranteed the fundamental right to equal political participation in their national legislature through their duly elected representatives. The case was opened for investigation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on October 18, 1993.  A decision on the admissibility and merits of the case is pending.

 

IX. RESOLUTION

 

         The United States must affirm that as a matter of both United States and international law, District of Columbia residents have the right to take part in national government through freely chosen representatives and to equality before the law.  The United States must pass domestic legislation granting District of Columbia residents the right to vote for federal representatives on a basis equal to all other US citizens living in the fifty states, and that they are entitled to enjoy local legislative and budgetary autonomy, comparable to other US citizens.  Such laws will remedy the current violations by the United States of Articles 2, 2a and 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.  Granting full voting rights and the right to a republican form of government to District of Columbia residents will ensure that the United States is in full compliance with its commitments under the Convention.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE BLACK POPULATION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

                                 

       In 1800, the City of Washington had a population of 10,066 White, 8,244 Slave, 783 Free Color.^[2] In 1840, the White population had grown to 30,657, the Free Color to 8,361, and the Slave population had been reduced to 4,694.^[3] By the end of the 1870s, the black population was about one-third. However, by 1959, when Washington, D.C. became the first majority black city in North America, the African-American population was 55 percent. Today, in 1994, the city's African-American population is 66%.^[4]

 

         The U.S. government claims that the drafters of the constitution were not "motivated by animus against any group of citizens" and did not make "an effort to disenfranchise [District] residents" at the time that the separate enclave was established.^[5] But the denial of equal representation and autonomous rights to District residents is unreasonable and unjust. The unreasonableness and injustice of this denial does not depend upon the intentions or motives of the framers of the U.S. Constitution.    What is relevant, however, are the intentions and motives of Congress-- the sole entity responsible for the District's past, present and future status. To determine whether or not Congress has discriminated against the minority population of the District of Columbia based on race, or any other factor, including political ideology, one must look at historical patterns of Congressional attitudinal behavior which manifestly demonstrate this alleged discrimination.

        

         When, in the late 1860s, District voters proposed the establishment of a territorial government and the grant of a delegate to Congress, the Senate approved the plan, but according to historian Steven J. Diner^[6] in his seminal work, Statehood and the Governance of the District of Columbia: An Historical Analysis of Policy Issues, "House members raised objections....some....feared the black franchise...." ^[7]

         However, just three years after the passage of the plan, "Congress voted to abolish the [District's] territorial government and replace it temporarily with a three-member presidentially appointed commission.... [S]ome congressmen, echoing the statement of many District residents, objected to the commissioner proposal because it denied self-government. Senator Morton, an outspoken opponent of the plan, complained that it took `from the people the right of local self-government.' He labeled it `anti-democratic' and `intended to get clear of the Negro vote.'" ^[8]

 

         As Professor Diner notes "[w]hen congressional enthusiasm for black rights diminished in the late 1870s, Congress readily eliminated all suffrage in the District, whose population was now about one-third black." ^[9]

 

         The absence of home rule for the District lasted for nearly 100 years and           "federal officials found new reasons for satisfaction with the Commissioner system.  Southern congressmen did not want blacks to vote in the nation's capital...."  However, "Neighborhood associations and other less powerful groups.... complained regularly about the shortcomings of an unrepresentative and unresponsive local government, but to no avail." ^[10]

 

         As the population of the District grew in the 1930s, "[m]any of those who came to the city during the war were black people from the South. After the war, the rapid growth of the nearly all-white suburbs and continuing black migration into the central city made Washington a majority black city by 1957, just when civil rights was gaining broad national support outside the South." ^[11]

 

         Little attention was paid to the issue of reform of the local government as dissatisfaction grew over its performance-- due in large part to the strain on resources caused by the Great Depression of the 1930s. "[B]y the late 1940s, as President Truman and the Democratic Party began to embrace civil rights, southerners in Congress stiffened their opposition to home rule on ideological grounds. In 1950 about a third of the District's population was black, but black migration into the District, coupled with white movement into the burgeoning suburbs, made Washington 55 percent black by 1960, the first major American city to have a black majority. As civil rights became the dominant issue of domestic politics nationally, the question of home rule for the District became thoroughly intertwined with the larger issue of civil rights. This at once gave supporters of home rule and representation new liberal political support, but it generated fiercer opposition from segregationists, who dominated the House District Committee. In the 87th Congress, eleven of the fifteen Democrats on the committee came from southern or border states. These included the chairman, John L. McMillan of South Carolina, and the next four ranking members." ^[12]

        

         Opposition to home rule became intense and clearly racial in its motivations. "Between 1949 and 1960 the Senate approved home-rule bills five times, but the House District Committee consistently refused to report out a home-rule bill.... One home rule advocate testified that`most of the blame' for the failure of home rule `belongs to a small group of willful Congressmen, most of them from the South, who, regardless of their lofty verbal sentiments, are determined that the large Negro population of this city shall not have the ballot.' It was, he asserted,`a denial of the franchise equal to anything which goes on in the Deep South.'" ^[13]

 

         Opponents, acknowledging the unreasonableness of their position to deny District residents democratic government at a time when the federal government was heralding the virtues of democracy to the world, devised diversionary tactics. "As part of their strategy to deny home rule and black voting rights in the District, southern congressmen....  insisted that retrocession [to the state of Maryland] was the only constitutional way to grant voting rights to the District. Throughout the 1950s they cynically introduced retrocession bills in order to deflect the demands for home rule and representation." ^[14]  (emphasis added.)

 

       As a result of a fear that the Soviets might use the status of District residents as a propaganda tool in the nascent Cold War era at the end of the 1950s, Congress was  pushed for passage of the Twenty-third Amendment, which granted residents of the District the right to vote for president for the first time in history. "[T]he amendment met its sole opposition in the southern states, where Tennessee alone ratified it. One official of the North Carolina Defenders of States Rights denounced the amendment as `another effort to strengthen the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.'" ^[15]

 

         During the 1960s, as the wave of the national civil rights movement crested, new support was built for home rule. "In 1961 John F. Kennedy, who as a congressman had endorsed home rule, became president, but the House District Committee under John McMillan of South Carolina steadfastly refused to report out a home-rule bill...." ^[16]

         After Kennedy's death, "[President Lyndon] Johnson endorsed home rule, telling Congress that `for too long this Nation had tolerated in the District of Columbia conditions that our ancestors fought a revolution to eliminate.....The Congress has been aroused to redress denials of the right to vote in every part of the country except the District....We affront its citizens and leave a significant part of our work unfinished by this unnecessary and invidious discrimination.'" ^[17]

 

         But Congressional opponents to District home rule were steadfast. "Again, in 1965, the Senate passed a home-rule bill.... [but] McMillan refused to schedule hearings.... [H]e did report out of his committee a bill for retrocession in the hope of derailing the home-rule bill...." ^[18]

 

         Despite efforts by President Johnson to modestly advance the autonomy of the District government by "reorganizing" it, Congressional opponents continued to attempt to block any kind of progress. "One home-rule leader testified before the House District Committee that [Johnson's] reorganization plan `is here for one reason and one reason only... and that reason is that there cannot be gotten out of this committee a bill establishing the right to vote.'" ^[19] 

 

         In a speech before Congress in 1969 President Nixon urged a recalcitrant Congress to draft a plan for home rule. He stated that "the District's citizens should not be expected to pay taxes for a government which they have no part in choosing or to bear the full burdens of citizenship without the full rights of citizenship." The Senate agreed to draft a plan, but under the resistant leadership of McMillan, the House would only approve a bill establishing a commission "without authority to propose a home-rule charter." ^[20]

 

         Finally, after the defeat of McMillan in a Congressional election, Congress passed limited home rule legislation for the District of Columbia in 1973-- the first home rule experienced by the people of the District in nearly 100 years. "But by the late 1970s the momentum toward full political rights for the District dissipated.... As the national mood increasingly turned against government, and as advocates of a conservative social agenda gained national influence, congressional sympathy for the liberal and heavily black population of the District, which has voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidates since 1964, began to wane..... [T]he close division between Democrats and Republicans after 1980 in the U.S. Senate has given Republicans still another compelling political reason to oppose District statehood. The District would almost certainly elect to the Senate two liberal black Democrats." ^[21] (emphasis added.)

 

         Congressional actions to stall and stymie the enfranchisement and empowerment of the people of the District testify to the tacit, subterranean prejudice which underpins the historical reluctance of the U.S. Congress to grant equal rights to the citizens of the nation's capital.  Indeed, even the limited home rule which the District presently enjoys is imperiled by the intolerance of Congress. 

 

         In the recent debate over the D.C. statehood bill, which suffered a stunning defeat in the House of Representatives on November 21, 1993, Mr. DeLay of Texas offered these remarks:

 

       Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to statehood for the District of Columbia.

         We ought to be debating on this floor whether we ought to be taking home rule

         away from the District and take over the city.... The District's hug-a-thug attitude on

         violent crime and the continued misuse of the city's police department is one

         example that clearly demonstrates the fact that the District is not a State and

         should not be considered for statehood... Mike Hubbard, a detective who spen[t]

         5 years training recruits states, `I saw people who were practically illiterate.

         I have seen people diagnosed as border-line-retarded graduate from the police

         academy.' This is absurd.  Is this an indication that the District is ready for

         statehood?....    Folks, let us get one thing straight.  The District, a liberal bastion of          corruption and crime has yet to come even close, in this Member's eyes, to deserving

         the awesome privilege and responsibility of statehood. This House would be better off          considering a provision I and many of my colleagues support, the repeal of home rule.^[22] 

 

         It is revealing to observe that every member of the Congressional Black Caucus, with the sole exception of Mr. Franks-- a Republican-- voted for the D.C. statehood bill. Mr. Rangel, a member of the Black Caucus, delicately addressed the issue of racism during the debate:

 

       Mr. Chairman, I ask us to get above our biases, our prejudice, and do what

         is right for America, so that when we go into Latin America, when we go

         into Asia, when we go into Africa, we can allow them to believe that this

         democracy that we love, this democracy that we cherish [is worth fighting

         for, and] that we are not willing to deny people who love this country, who

         have fought for this country, who died for this country, to play according

         to a different set of rules.^[23]

 

         Mr. Dellums, also a member of the Caucus, remarked paradoxically:

       [T]his debate cannot be about enfranchising the residents of the District of

         Columbia.  We have advocated free elections in Central America, South

         America, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, South Africa, Haiti, Angola,

         Nigeria.  To do anything less would be hypocritical, so clearly this

         discussion is not about that.^[24]

 

         Mr. Owens stated:

 

       School children in modern times know that the United Nations and the

         United States offer as a solution to most of the international problems in

         the world a referendum, a vote.  They demand that people have free

         elections.  They demanded it in Cambodia, they demanded it in Haiti,

         in El Salvador, free elections, enfranchisement of people.  Even in

         countries where people were not literate, and had to vote for a symbol

         rather than for a word, we demanded it, and we got elections in India

         and a number of other places, free elections, enfranchisement.

 

         Thomas Jefferson certainly did not mean to disenfranchise 600,000

         people, and certainly John Adams and the other framers of the Constitution

         did not foresee the disenfranchisement of 600,000 people, 600,000 people

         who deserve the right to vote.  We must abide by the spirit of the

         Constitution, and we all know what the spirit of the framers stated.  That

         is that everybody, every American citizen should have the right to vote.^[25]

 

         Mr. Lewis proclaimed:

 

       Almost 30 years ago on a Sunday afternoon just like today, in a little town called

         Selma in the heart of the Black Belt of Alabama, some of us were beaten

         with billy clubs and bullwhips, bloodied and trampled upon by horses.

         We wanted to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Alabama River,

         on our way to Montgomery.  We wanted to dramatize to the Nation

         that people of color could not register and vote.  We had one simple

         message: one man, one vote.

        

         It is not right that there are still Americans for whom one-man, one-vote is

         still a dream.  It is not right that there are still Americans for whom

         democracy is not a reality.  It is not right that there are still Americans

         who face taxation without representation.

 

         Many of us have risen on this floor to speak in support of these principles--

         in Russia, Haiti, China, Somalia, and South Africa.  We have cast dozens

         of votes supporting democracy in other countries.

 

         The time is long overdue to extend these same principles to the people of

         the District of Columbia.^[26]

 

         Ms. Meeks pronounced:

 

       Mr. Chairman, the Founding Fathers had no conception that African-Americans

         would one day be full-fledged citizens.  The Constitution expressly provided

         that they were to be deemed three-fifths of a man.  We African-American

         citizens know that constitutional conception and implementation are two

         different things.  The founders of this Nation did not contemplate the

         disenfranchisement of 600,000 American citizens.

 

         Mr. Chairman, all over the world, we are a force for democracy-- except

         in our own capital.  I find that ironic.  Among the great triumphs of this

         decade we celebrate progress toward enfranchisement for Africans in

         South Africa, Palestinians on the East Bank.  Amongst the setbacks of

         everything we hold dear has been the rebuff of our attempts to restore

         Aristides to his duly-elected position and our inability to get China moving

         toward some recognition of basic human rights.  We know what we stand

         for as a nation.  Why do we have so much difficulty with that when it

         comes to 600,000 citizens in our Nation's capital[?]^[27]

 

         And finally, Mr. Abercrombie made the following relevant remarks:

 

       Mr. Chairman, as a Representative from the last State to be admitted

         into the Union, in 1959, I want to point out what happened with some

         other States.  Alaska: the arguments against were the population was

         too small for statehood, resources of revenue uncertain, 99 percent of

         the land federally owned.  Arizona; violence, territory lacks resources

         to sustain a State government.  Colorado:  State had a disproportionate

         share of influence in the Congress and the population of the territory

         was not stable.  Florida; population too small. We get to Hawaii, we

         get to South Dakota, the territories had a disproportionate share of

         influence in the Congress and the populations were not large enough.

 

         These are the kinds of arguments that are being brought up today.

         This is the kind of prejudice that was held. Violence and racism was

         at the root of trying to stop almost every bid for statehood from

         every State that has existed.^[28]  

 

         In 1964, 92% of white "Dixie"^[29] members of the House of Representatives voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an act which effectively ended racial segregation in the United States.^[30] 

 

         Thirty years later, the prejudicial voting records of southern Congresspersons against the empowerment of African-Americans still closely mirror those of their predecessors. In 1993, 80% of all "Dixie" Congressional members voted against D.C. statehood.^[31]

 

 

 

 

 

Submitted by: Timothy Cooper, Executive Director, Democracy First

4101 Davenport St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20016

 

202/244-9479; 202/361-0989 (cell) (in Geneva: 0797175028)

E-mail:       Worldright@aol.com