IV 

118TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION H. RES. 654 

Calling on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. Russell from 

the Russell Senate Office Building. 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

AUGUST 18, 2023 

Mr. GREEN of Texas submitted the following resolution; which was referred 

to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

RESOLUTION 

Calling on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. 

Russell from the Russell Senate Office Building. 

Whereas this resolution may be cited as the original resolution calling on the Senate to remove the name of Richard 

B. Russell from the Russell Senate Office Building; 

Whereas Senator Richard B. Russell opposed civil rights as 

‘‘unconstitutional and unwise’’; 

Whereas, in 1935, Senator Russell participated in his first 

filibuster of a civil rights bill, when he and his colleagues 

in the Senate stopped an anti-lynching bill with 6 days 

of nonstop talking; 

Whereas, in 1936, Senator Russell stated in a re-election 

campaign speech that ‘‘as one who was born and reared 

in the atmosphere of the Old South, with 6 generations 


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2 

•HRES 654 IH 

of my forebears now resting beneath Southern soil, I am 

willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and insure White supremacy in the social, economic, and political life of our state as any man who lives 

within her borders’’; 

Whereas, in 1956, Senator Russell wrote an initial draft of 

the Southern Manifesto, the bicameral resolution stating 

support for segregation and refusal to observe Brown v. 

Board of Education; 

Whereas, because President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964, Senator Russell, along with 

more than a dozen other Senators, including Herman 

Talmadge, boycotted the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City; 

Whereas, on March 17, 1964, the New York Times published 

an article entitled, ‘‘Relocate Negroes Evenly in States’’, 

in which Senator Russell proposed a voluntary ‘‘racial relocation’’ program to adjust the imbalance of the AfricanAmerican population between the 11 States of the old 

Confederacy and the rest of the Union; 

Whereas, in 1972, shortly after Senator Russell’s death, the 

Senate voted in an overwhelming majority (99–1) that 

the Old Senate Office Building be named the Russell 

Senate Office Building; 

Whereas historian Gilbert C. Fite wrote at the conclusion of 

his biography of Senator Russell, ‘‘White supremacy and 

racial segregation were to him cardinal principles for 

good and workable human relationships’’; and 

Whereas Public Law 115–58, a joint resolution signed into 

law on September 14, 2017, rejects ‘‘White nationalism, 

White supremacy, and neoNazism’’: Now, therefore, be it 


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•HRES 654 IH 

1 Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 

2 (1) once again rejects White nationalism and 

3 White supremacy as hateful expressions of intoler4 ance that are contradictory to the values that define 

5 the people of the United States; 

6 (2) condemns the use of captions, statutes, me7 morials, and artwork used or erected to memorialize 

8 Senator Richard B. Russell, or any other lawmaker 

9 who intentionally disavowed the Declaration of 

10 Independence’s exhortation that all persons are cre11 ated equal; and 

12 (3) calls on the Senate to remove the name of 

13 Richard B. Russell from the Russell Senate Office 

14 Building and to revert to using the building’s origi15 nal name, the Old Senate Office Building, until the 

16 Senate finds a suitable honoree. 

Æ 


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