HONORING THE WORK OF ARMAND DERFNER

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, February 22, 2019

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of 
Representatives to join me in recognizing the important contributions 
of Armand Derfner to the advancement of civil rights in the United 
States.
  In 1940, on his second birthday, Armand Derfner and his Jewish 
parents fled Nazi Germany to America. Derfner graduated from Princeton 
University in 1960. He would go on to receive Princeton's Koren Prize 
in History and a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship directly 
following his graduation. Derfner attended Yale Law School, where he 
was the Note & Comment Editor of the Yale Law Journal and was Order of 
the Coif.
  Following his graduation from Yale Law School, Derfner clerked for 
Chief Judge David L. Bazelon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
District of Columbia Circuit. Derfner then became an associate at 
Covington & Burling.
  After practicing law in the District of Columbia, Derfner moved to 
Jim Crow Mississippi to practice as a civil rights lawyer. His passion 
for social and political justice led to his being stalked. His dog was 
even poisoned, and he and his wife were shot at multiple times.
  While in Mississippi, Derfner acted as a civil rights attorney for 
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In 1968, Derfner represented 
voters in Greenwood, Mississippi, on the first day that the Voting 
Rights Act became effective. At just 29 years old, Derfner argued and 
won his first Supreme Court case. From the 1960s through the 1990s, 
Derfner played a vital role in civil rights cases, taking many of them 
to the Supreme Court. Derfner argued before the Supreme Court five 
times and won every case. These Supreme Court arguments helped shape 
the Voting Rights Act and its amendments.
  Derfner also contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Attorneys 
Fees Awards Act in 1976 and the Equal Access to Justice Act of 1980. It 
was Derfner's work that led to the freeing of the Charleston Five, a 
protest group that was falsely accused of inciting violence. In the 
1980s, while still attached to civil rights work in Mississippi, 
Derfner worked closely on civil rights issues with Massachusetts 
Senator Edward Kennedy and simultaneously taught at American 
University.
  In 2002, Derfner was awarded the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award by 
the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. In 2009, the American Bar 
Association named Derfner's firm, Derfner & Altman, Public Interest 
Lawyers of the Year. He is an honorary lifetime trustee on the Board of 
Trustees for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Derfner 
has just been named the recipient of the 2019 Commitment to Justice 
Award from the Center for Heirs' Property Preservation.
  I ask the House of Representatives to join me in recognizing Armand 
Derfner for his dedication to civil rights and for his significant 
contributions to recognizing equal justice under the law.

                          ____________________

IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED

TRIBUTE TO NAT ``KING'' COLE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 13, 2019

  Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of Nat 
``King'' Cole, who was born one hundred years ago on March 17, 1919 in 
Montgomery, Alabama.
   Mr. Cole is recognized for being one of the most distinguished and 
exemplary music recording artists of all time and as a talisman for the 
civil rights movement.
   Nat King Cole began his music career with a focus on jazz, having 
founded the Nat King Cole Trio as a young man. The band quickly became   


an influential melodic phenomenon. He signed with Capitol Records in 
1943, and the release of his first album, The King Cole Trio, followed 
in 1945. The album was widely successful as it hit the top of 
Billboard's inaugural album chart. The talented pianist and vocalist 
went on to record approximately 700 songs under Capitol Record's label, 
including 150 singles that appeared on the R&B, Pop and/or Country 
charts of Billboard. Mr. Cole's success caused Capitol Record's 
legendary Hollywood building on Vine Street to be informally nicknamed 
``The House That Nat Built.''
   In 1946, he hosted the nationally aired, fifteen-minute ``King Cole 
Trio Time,'' which was the first broadcast of its kind to have an 
African American musician as a host. Mr. Cole made history once again 
in 1956 when he became the first African American performer to host his 
own network television show, NBC's ``Nat King Cole Show.'' He also 
appeared in numerous films, including St. Louis Blues and Cat Ballou.
   Along with his legendary musical career, Mr. Cole is remembered for 
his milestone leadership in the civil rights movement. After purchasing 
a house in the all-white Hancock Park neighborhood in 1948, he became a 
target of the Ku Klux Klan who burned a cross on his family's lawn. 
This horrific incident spurred him to help overturn a 1920's City of 
Los Angeles statute that allowed the neighborhood to be segregated.
   Before Mr. Cole's premature death in 1965, when he was just 45 years 
old, his final album, L-O-V-E, reached number four on the Billboard 
album chart. At that time, Capital Records had sold more than nine 
million Nat King Cole records. Nat King Cole received many honors 
including being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, receiving 
a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award and being featured on a 
U.S. Postal Service commemorative stamp.
   Married in 1948, Mr. Cole and his wife, Maria had five children: 
Natalie, Carole, Nat Kelly, Casey and Timolin. In 2008, their twin 
daughters, Timolin and Casey Cole, founded Nat King Cole Generation 
Hope to help fund music programs for schools across America.
   I ask all Members of Congress to join me in recognizing Nat King 
Cole on the one-hundred-year milestone of his birth. Mr. Cole's life is 
a lesson in success despite adversity, the triumph of respect, talent 
and civility coupled with cultural, business and political savvy.

                          ____________________

from the Boston Review 2/9/2019

Sandra Bland Is Not Alone

On Thursday of this week, Sandra Bland should have celebrated her thirty-second birthday. Instead she died in a Texas jail four years ago after being charged a $5,000 bail, which she could not afford. Unfortunately her story is not unique, as her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, reminds us: “I’m asking you to wake up. Can any of you tell me the other six women who died in jail in July 2015 along with Sandra Bland? That is a problem.”