IV 
115TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 22 
Recognizing the difficult challenges Black veterans faced when returning 
home after serving in the Armed Forces, their heroic military sacrifices, 
and their patriotism in fighting for equal rights and for the dignity 
of a people and a Nation. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
FEBRUARY 7, 2017 
Mrs. BEATTY (for herself, Mr. O’HALLERAN, Mr. EVANS, Ms. JACKSON LEE, 
Mr. DAVID SCOTT of Georgia, Mr. BISHOP of Georgia, Mr. SOTO, Mr. 
TAKANO, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. VARGAS, Ms. KELLY of Illinois, Mr. 
JEFFRIES, Mr. VEASEY, Ms. JAYAPAL, Mr. RYAN of Ohio, Mr. HAS-
TINGS, and Ms. CLARKE of New York) submitted the following concurrent 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Recognizing the difficult challenges Black veterans faced 
when returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, 
their heroic military sacrifices, and their patriotism in 
fighting for equal rights and for the dignity of a people 
and a Nation. 
Whereas there has been no war fought by or within the 
United States in which Blacks did not participate, includ-
ing the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the War of 
1812, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, 
the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Oper-
ation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom; 
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•HCON 22 IH 
Whereas Frederick Douglass voiced his opinion in one of his 
autobiographies, ‘‘Life and Times of Frederick Doug-
lass’’, writing, ‘‘I . . . urged every man who could, to en-
list; to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoul-
der, the star-spangled banner over his head’’, later re-
marking that ‘‘there is no power on Earth which can 
deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the 
United States.’’; 
Whereas during the Civil War, Black soldiers, commonly re-
ferred to as the United States Colored Troops, were 
treated as second-class citizens, the health care and hos-
pitals available to them were substandard, and they often 
died from neglect of services that were supposed to be ad-
ministered by medical personnel; 
Whereas Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter, 
members of the first generation of freedom’s children, 
founded the Niagara Movement in 1905; 
Whereas in his book, ‘‘Black Reconstruction in America’’, 
published in 1935, DuBois wrote that ‘‘[n]othing else 
made Negro citizenship conceivable, but the record of the 
Negro soldier as a fighter.’’; 
Whereas the 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hell- 
fighters, fought the Germans during World War I as part 
of the French Army and served the longest stretch in 
combat, 191 days without replacement, without losing a 
foot of ground or a man as prisoner; 
Whereas at the end of the service of the 369th Infantry, the 
entire regiment received the Croix de Guerre, which was 
France’s highest military honor, from a grateful French 
nation; 
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•HCON 22 IH 
Whereas Alain Locke, the first Black Rhodes Scholar, wrote 
in 1925 about a ‘‘New Negro’’ who had returned from 
battle with a bold new spirit that helped spark a new 
mood in the Black community; 
Whereas in 1917, Charles Hamilton Houston encountered 
racism after entering World War I as a commissioned 
first lieutenant in the segregated 17th Provisional Train-
ing Regiment, later writing that ‘‘I made up my mind 
that if I got through this war I would study law and use 
my time fighting for men who could not strike back.’’; 
Whereas Dorie Miller, a messman attendant in the Navy, was 
catapulted to national hero status and an icon to genera-
tions, after displaying heroism on board the USS West 
Virginia during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 
December 7, 1941; 
Whereas before becoming a famous baseball player, Jackie 
Robinson was court-martialed in the Army for refusing to 
sit in the back of the bus in 1944, and when he was later 
acquitted, he wrote that ‘‘[i]t was a small victory, for I 
had learned that I was in two wars, one against the for-
eign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.’’; 
Whereas the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black pi-
lots, flew with distinction during World War II under the 
command of Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., the highly 
decorated officer who served for more than 35 years and 
became the first Black general in the Air Force; 
Whereas during World War II, the 6888 (known as the ‘‘Six 
Triple Eights’’), the first all-woman Black Postal Bat-
talion who served in England and then France, were 
given the daunting task of clearing out a 2-year backlog 
of over 90,000 pieces of mail, succeeded in their mission, 
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•HCON 22 IH 
completed it in 3 months, and went on to make a positive 
impact on racial integration in the military; 
Whereas during World War II, the Army’s 92nd Infantry Di-
vision, better known as the ‘‘Buffalo Soldiers’’, which 
traces its direct lineage back to the 9th and 10th Cavalry 
units from 1866 to the early 1890s, was the only Black 
segregated unit to experience combat during the Italian 
campaign of 1944–1945 with several members later earn-
ing Medals of Honor for bravery; 
Whereas Reverend Benjamin Hooks, who served in the 92nd 
Division, found himself in the humiliating position of 
guarding Italian prisoners of war who were allowed to eat 
in restaurants that were off-limits to him; 
Whereas even after President Truman issued Executive 
Order 9981 desegregating the military on July 26, 1948, 
discrimination continued; 
Whereas in 1946, when Charles and Medgar Evers tried to 
register to vote, they were turned away at the polling sta-
tion; 
Whereas after serving overseas in the Army, Charles and 
Medgar Evers returned home to Mississippi where, in 
1952, they began to organize voter registration drives for 
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 
People (NAACP); 
Whereas Oliver L. Brown, a World War II Army veteran 
from Kansas, and Harry Briggs, a World War II sailor 
from South Carolina, were the fathers of two of the five 
named plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of To-
peka and Briggs v. Elliott, the historic school desegrega-
tion cases of 1954; 
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•HCON 22 IH 
Whereas the Black heroes and heroines of World War II and 
the Korean War, such as Private Sarah Keys and Wom-
en’s Army Corps (WAC) officer Dovey Roundtree, won 
significant victories against discrimination in interstate 
transportation in landmark civil rights cases, including 
Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, which was decided in 
1955, six days before Rosa Parks’ historic protest of Ala-
bama’s Jim Crow laws in Montgomery; 
Whereas in his address at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., commented on the irony of 
Blacks fighting in Vietnam to guarantee liberties in 
Southeast Asia while not enjoying the same rights at 
home; 
Whereas Black veterans who were in the forefront of the 
leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, with their 
strong resolve to address the paradox of military service 
abroad and the denial of basic rights at home, brought 
deeper meaning to the word ‘‘democracy’’, and through 
their example, transformed the face of the United States; 
Whereas the Black veterans of the Nation’s wars sowed the 
seeds for today’s bountiful harvest through the Niagara 
Movement, the NAACP, and the latter-day Civil Rights 
Movement, all of which share a common ancestry in the 
Civil War, without which there would be no Civil Rights 
Movement and no equal rights for all Americans; and 
Whereas today, Black veterans suffer at a disproportionate 
rate from chronic illnesses and homelessness and are 
plagued by health disparities: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
concurring), That Congress recognizes— 
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•HCON 22 IH 
(1) the difficult challenges Black veterans faced 
when returning home after serving in the Armed 
Forces, their heroic military sacrifices, and their pa-
triotism in fighting for equal rights and for the dig-
nity of a people and a Nation; and 
(2) the need for the Department of Veterans 
Affairs to continue to work to eliminate any health 
and benefit disparities for our Nation’s minority vet-
erans. 
Æ 
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