Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and Chairman of its Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, today condemned the recent vandalization of a monument to Major League Baseball’s first Black player, civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson, at his birthplace in southwest Georgia. See a New York Times story about the vandalism and the replacement of the historical marker here.
Congressman Cohen last year reintroduced the Civil Rights Legacy Protection Act following the repeated acts of vandalism at a memorial marker for Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old African American who was brutally lynched by White supremacists outside Money, Mississippi, in 1955.
The bill would regulate and reinforce protections for civil rights memorials and monuments across the United States by establishing federal penalties against vandalism of these sites, similar to the existing safeguards in place for the vandalism of veterans’ memorials. It would also direct the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights to create a list of monuments and memorials that should be protected.
Congressman Cohen made the following statement:
“Vandalism intended to deface or remove memorials to the history of Black Americans or to the heroes of the civil rights movement must be condemned, and these iconic monuments must be protected. This incident involving Jackie Robinson’s birthplace marker is the latest reminder that we must safeguard these sites with effective federal protections and penalties. I look forward to the bill’s passage.”
H.R. 1110, the Civil Rights Legacy Protection Act, is co-sponsored by Representatives Cohen, Sanford Bishop, Andre Carson, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Barbara Lee. The bill is also supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Emmett Till Memorial Commission.
Currently, there is no federal law protecting civil rights memorials and monuments. According to advocates for these sites, their leading course of action to date has been to rely on local and state vandalism and hate crime laws to prosecute suspects. The Emmett Till memorial marker was replaced in 2021 for the fourth time because of repeated acts of vandalism.
The Civil Rights Legacy Protection Act will help to provide similar federal protections to civil rights monuments and memorials as is given to other national monuments and veterans memorials.
Original source can be found here.
