Historic Events Converge As DC Native Son Receives Highest Congressional Honor (10/27/09)

Historic Events Converge As D.C. Native Son Receives Highest Congressional Honor

and Norton Finds Ways to Move D.C. Voting Rights

October 27, 2009

WASHINGTON, DC - Historic events come together as Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) speaks at a Congressional Gold Medal award ceremony for D.C. native, Sen. Edward W. Brooke, on Wed., Oct. 28, 11 a.m., in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, as we approach passage of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act of 2009 this year. The ceremony isby invitation only because of the size of the Rotunda, but Norton managed to get a limited number of tickets for D.C. residents who called in to her office and more are currently available. President Obama and House and Senate leaders will speak at the ceremony to award the highest Congressional honor. Brooke was born and raised in the District of Columbia, graduated from Dunbar High School and Howard University, then left his hometown where he had no representation and no home rule and went on to represent Massachusetts in the Senate from 1967-1979.

Norton conceived of the award for Brooke as part of her campaign to gain voting rights for the District of Columbia. Brooke, a Republican, called his friends in the Senate to help Norton gain bi-partisan support. The late Senator Ted Kennedy introduced the Gold Medal bill in the Senate. Earlier this year, Norton got the voting rights bill passed in the Senate. She has spent the last four months working on measures to move the bill to final passage in the House without the lethal gun amendment attached to the Senate version. Norton is encouraged by responses to a detailed proposal she submitted after months of research to attach the bill to the Defense Appropriations bill or to use any of several other ways Norton has found to get a clean D.C. House Voting Rights Act passed.

"As history, it all comes together: the Congressional Gold Medal for the first African American senator, a D.C. native son, in the year of the election of the first African American president, and the passage of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act," Norton said. "We are very close to rounding out this trilogy in our history. Wednesday's ceremony will help drive home the disempowerment of D.C. residents as Congress gives its highest honor to our native son, who left his hometown, unable to vote for president, mayor, House representative, or senator, and became our nation's first popularly-elected African American senator."