Eleanor Holmes Norton: “It is not as if the Congress of the United States has never understood the injustices before you. The reason I come to…”

“It is not as if the Congress of the United States has never understood the injustices before you. The reason I come to the House floor today is because there is turnover in the House all the time and many Members have never heard this until now. And why not? Because you don't listen to what happens to somebody else's district. You are too busy dealing with your own district. That is how we like it, and that is how we would like to make it for every Member of the House. Yes, almost 45 years ago, the House understood the injustice of what was then the case. The District had no self- government. It intermittently had some self-government in the 19th century--and may I add, that the height of that self-government was about the same as the District has now: a Delegate Member of the House and the right to local government. And who gave them that? It was the post-Civil War Congress, which was a Republican Congress. The Republicans lost their way, and they are chiefly responsible now for the District's not having what their own party understood should happen after the Civil War. They had fought a Civil War for democracy for everyone, and they, indeed, began the home rule process that was lost after Reconstruction and renewed again almost 45 years ago with the 1974 Home Rule Act. Here again in the 20th it wasn't the Democrats who were solely responsible. Yes, it was a Democratic Congress, but it was a Republican President, President Richard Nixon.…”