IV 
119TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 59 
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 
NOVEMBER 7, 2025 
Mrs. BEATTY (for herself, Mr. MCGARVEY, Mr. HORSFORD, Mr. FIELDS, Ms. 
KAMLAGER-DOVE, Mr. COHEN, Mr. GREEN of Texas, Mr. BELL, Mrs. 
MCIVER, and Mr. JACKSON of Illinois) 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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Whereas Frederick Douglass voiced his opinion on the civic 
value of military service in one of his autobiographies, 
‘‘Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,’’ writing, ‘‘I . . 
. urged every man who could, to enlist; to get an eagle 
on his button, a musket on his shoulder, the star-span-
gled banner over his head,’’ and later remarking 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, fought 
with honor and distinction despite being treated as sec-
ond-class citizens; 
Whereas the health care and hospitals available to Black sol-
diers during the Civil War were substandard, and Black 
soldiers often died from the withholding of services that 
were supposed to be administered 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 and fought for 
desegregation in the Armed Forces in World War I; 
Whereas, in his book, ‘‘Black Reconstruction in America,’’ 
published in 1935, DuBois recognized the importance of 
equity in military service writing that ‘‘Nothing 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, continued the history of distinguished military 
service despite treatment as second-class citizens, fighting 
the Germans during World War I as part of the French 
Army and serving the longest stretch in combat, 191 
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•HCON 59 IH 
days without replacement and 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; 
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 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, at the start of the United States involvement in 
World War II, Dorie Miller, a messman attendant in the 
Navy, was catapulted to national hero status and an icon 
to generations, after displaying heroism on board the 
USS West Virginia during the Japanese attack on Pearl 
Harbor on December 7, 1941; 
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 postal battalion comprised ex-
clusively of Black women, who served in England and 
then France, was given the daunting task of clearing out 
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a 2-year backlog of more than 90,000 pieces of mail, 
completed the mission in 3 months, and went on to make 
a positive impact on racial integration in the Armed 
Forces; 
Whereas, before becoming a famous baseball player, Jackie 
Robinson was court-martialed in the Army in 1944 for 
refusing to sit in the back of the bus, 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 
foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home’’; 
Whereas, during World War II, the Army’s 92nd Infantry 
Division, 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 
campaigns of 1944 and 1945, with several members of 
the unit later earning Medals of Honor for bravery; 
Whereas Reverend Benjamin Hooks, who served in the 92nd 
Infantry Division, found himself in the humiliating posi-
tion of guarding Italian prisoners of war who were al-
lowed 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 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 2 of the 5 
named plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of To-
peka, 347 U.S. 483 (1952) and Briggs v. Elliott, 342 
U.S. 350 (1952), the historic school-desegregation cases 
of 1952; 
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Whereas the Black heroes and heroines of World War II and 
the Korean War, and their offspring such as Private 
Sarah Keys and Women’s Army Corps officer Dovey 
Roundtree, won significant victories against discrimina-
tion in interstate transportation in landmark civil rights 
cases, including Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, 64 
MCC 769 (1955), which was decided 6 days before Rosa 
Parks’ historic protest of Alabama’s Jim Crow laws in 
Montgomery; 
Whereas, after serving overseas in the Army, Charles and 
Medgar Evers returned home to Mississippi, where in 
1946, they tried to register to vote but were turned away 
at the polling stations; 
Whereas, in 1952, Charles and Medgar Evers began to orga-
nize voter registration drives for the National Association 
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); 
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 ex-
ample, transformed the face of the United States; 
Whereas Black veterans of the Nation’s wars sowed the seeds 
for today’s bountiful harvest that includes the Niagara 
Movement, the NAACP, and the modern-day civil rights 
movement, all of which share a common ancestry in the 
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Civil War, without which there would be no civil rights 
movement and no equal rights for all Americans; and 
Whereas 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— 
(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 minority veterans in the 
United States. 
Æ 
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