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

Bill: 118-hres-654
Sponsor: full_name: Rep. Green, Al [D-TX-9]
Introduced: 2023-08-18
Policy area: Congress
Subjects: Government buildings, facilities, and property

Members of Congress

Senate
Latest action: action_date: 2023-08-21
text: Referred to the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management.

Summaries:
action_date: 2023-08-18
action_desc: Introduced in House
text: <p>This resolution calls on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. Russell from the Russell Senate Office Building and revert to the building's original name&#8212;the Old Senate Office Building.</p>

tv_txt: IV 118th CONGRESS 1st Session H. RES. 654 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 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 African-American 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

That the House of Representatives— (1) once again rejects White nationalism and White supremacy as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States; (2) condemns the use of captions, statutes, memorials, and artwork used or erected to memorialize Senator Richard B. Russell, or any other lawmaker who intentionally disavowed the Declaration of Independence’s exhortation that all persons are created equal; and (3) calls on the Senate to remove the name of Richard B. Russell from the Russell Senate Office Building and to revert to using the building’s original name, the Old Senate Office Building, until the Senate finds a suitable honoree.