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We are no longer actively updating this account. For updates from the Center for Legislative Archives, please visit https://www.archives.gov/legislative.
Follow other @USNatArchives social media accounts: https://www.archives.gov/social-media
Representative John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), the longest-serving African American member of Congress and the third-longest serving member of the U.S. House of Representatives, served in the House for over 52 years. His first employment on Capitol Hill was as a staff member in the office of Representative John Dingell (D-MI). Conyers was elected to the House in 1965 and was re-elected every Congress until his retirement in 2017. While in Congress, Conyers served as chairman of the House Committee on Government Operations (101st through 103rd Congresses) and the House Committee on the Judiciary (110th and 111th Congresses), and was known as the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, an organization he helped found.
On April 8, 1968, four days after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Representative Conyers introduced a bill proposing King’s birthday be celebrated as a national holiday. Conyers continued to push the legislation for the next 15 years until it was signed into law by President Reagan in 1983, a legislative victory Conyers was particularly proud of.
Representative Conyers died on October 27, 2019, at the age of 90.
Certificate of Election for John Conyers, Jr., Representative of Michigan, 12/8/1964; Records of the Office of the Clerk, 89th Congress, U. S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233; National Archives.
H .R. 16510, A bill to designate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a legal public holiday, 4/8/1968; Judiciary Committee, Legislative Files, Public Bills, 90th Congress, U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233; National Archives.
Elijah Cummings (D-MD) was first elected to the U.S. House of Representative in a special election in 1996. He was re-elected to Congress 12 times, continuously representing Maryland’s 7th District until his death on October 17, 2019. While in Congress, Cummings’ committee assignments included the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and the Select Committee on Benghazi. During his congressional career Cummings was a member of a number of caucuses including as co-founder and chair of the Congressional Caucus on Drug Policy, the Congressional Black Caucus (Chair in the 108th Congress), the Congressional Arts Caucus, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The two documents shown here are Elijah Cummings’ certificate of election and oath of office for his first term as a member of the House of Representatives.
Rep. Cummings will lie in state in the Capitol today, Thursday, October 24, 2019.
On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded during a duel with Aaron Burr and died the following day. Five years after Hamilton's untimely death, his widow, Elizabeth Hamilton, submitted a petition to Congress asking for a pension based on her husband's military service as Lieutenant Colonel in the Revolutionary War.
In 1782, Hamilton had been a member of the Continental Congress that passed legislation establishing army pensions. For ethical reasons, he had relinquished his claim to compensation.
In her petition, presented to the House of Representatives on May 30, 1809, Elizabeth Hamilton asked Congress to restore her husband's right to a pension. Along with her petition, she submitted Hamilton's October 28, 1783 Commission as Lieutenant Colonel for the Revolutionary Army and a personal statement of his property and debts. Believed to be written on July 1, 1804, just days before he died, Hamilton's statement is an explanation of his financial circumstances "if an accident should happen to me." In it, he ties his public service to the present state of his finances, which included debts that would prove a burden to his family.
Mrs. Hamilton's initial attempt to secure a pension failed, but in 1816, Congress passed a bill granting five years pay, which was a full pension, to Mrs. Hamilton.
Conjuring Easter egg hunts and springtime is this adorable letterhead from the Paas Dye Company. Tiny elves dye enormous Easter eggs. The Paas Company has been making egg dyeing kits since 1893 and is still going strong today.
We stumbled on this letter, from 1940, in the records of the House Ways and Means Committee. Because businesses write to Congress about tax and tariff legislation that affects them, the records of the Ways and Means Committee are filled with wonderful letterhead like this.
Committee Papers of the Committee on Ways and Means (HR76A-F41.1), 76th Congress, U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233
In 1857 the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind began to provide primary school education for deaf and blind students. In 1864 Congress authorized the institution to confer college degrees with the passage of S. 163 – seen above. President Lincoln signed the bill into law on April 8, 1864. In 1986, after several name changes, Congress gave the Columbia Institution the name it still goes by today, Gallaudet University.
Map of the Grounds of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind, Committee Papers of the Committee on the District of Columbia, HR 38A-E5.1; Records of the House of Representatives, Record Group 233.
S. 163 38th Congress, Bills and Resolutions Originating in the Senate, Committee on the District of Columbia, SEN 38A-B2; Records of the U.S. Senate, Record Group 46.
H.J.Res. 1, better known as the 19th Amendment, was introduced on May 19, 1919 by Representative James R. Mann of Illinois. The resolution proposed an amendment to the Constitution extending the right of suffrage to women. On May 21, 1919 it passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 304 to 90, and on June 4, 1919 it passed in the Senate by a vote of 56 to 25.
After passage through U.S. Congress, the 19th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification. Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan were the first three states to ratify – the certificates from each of these three states are represented above. However, the 19th Amendment wasn’t formally adopted until August 1920, when Tennessee became the necessary 36th state to ratify.
Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin Ratifying the 19th Amendment, Ratification of Woman Suffrage Amendment; SEN 66A-M4; Records of the U.S. Senate, Record Group 46.
This petition protesting the tariff on works of art reads like a who's who of the art world in late nineteenth century America.
Artists Childe Hassam, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, Asher Brown Durand, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Thomas Eakins, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Eastman Johnson, and Daniel Chester French, and architects Stanford White, Frank Furness, and James Renwick, Jr., are among hundreds of signatories on this 1886 petition which was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee.
These artists asked Congress to enact a law admitting works of art -- paintings, sculptures, engravings, casts, models, antiques, and photographs -- ;from foreign countries into the United States free of duty. They joined a growing movement protesting the 30% tariff on imported works of art enacted by Congress in 1883. While the petition argues that art is a means for education and civilization, some artists, like Childe Hassam, added their own arguments. Hassam handwrote on his petition "art is universal and needs no taxation," but apparently he did not think much of Italian watercolors sold to tourists, as he added, "tax the rot that comes into the country in the way of Italian watercolors." Ouch! As ever, art is in the eye of the beholder.
Petition of American Artists, 1886; Petitions and Memorials Referred to the Committee on the Ways and Means, 49th Congress; U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233.
In 1885 the Treasury apparently had too many silver dollars in its vault and needed to get them into circulation; that was the reported reason why it stopped issuing new one- and two-dollar bills.
“A great scarcity of small bills exists at the present time, and those which are in circulation are so ragged, worn and filthy that they are unfit for use…”
Who knew there was a time when there weren’t enough one and two dollar bills? The following year several cities’ Boards of Trade petitioned Congress to encourage the Treasury to reissue the small denomination paper notes because they were so much easier to carry than heavy coins. Compare what’s in your pocket to what’s in your wallet and see that the nudging worked.
Memorial from the Philadelphia Board of Trade, 6/22/1886; Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents (HR49A-H4.1); 49th Congress; Committee on Banking and Currency; Records of the House of Representatives, RG 233.
Spring training is upon us, ushering in the first notes of spring in the midst of the last long month of winter, as it has for over a century. The history of baseball is as integral to the fiber of the sport as is the annual trip to warmer weather and the reporting of pitchers and catchers, and no history of the game is complete without reference to one of its first serious historians. Dr. Harold Seymour’s PhD was the first awarded based on baseball research, and his book (referenced above in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler, who was considering sports antitrust legislation during the 85th Congress) influenced generations of sports historians. Modern baseball historians such as John Thorn have rightly identified his wife, Dorothy Seymour Mills, as equally essential to the scholarship presented in the three seminal Seymour tomes (Baseball: The Early Years; Baseball: The Golden Age; Baseball: The People’s Game), and regularly cite the two as major contributors to our understanding of the game.
Letter to Emanuel Celler and Copy of Article, 10/26/1957; Committee Papers (HR85A-F11.16); Committee on the Judiciary; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, RG 233.
#Congress #Springtraining #baseball #MLB #Seymour #JohnThorn #EmanuelCeller #AntiTrust
John D. Dingell, Jr., the longest-serving member of Congress, represented the 15th District of Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 60 years. In 1955 he won a special election to replace his father, John D. Dingell, Sr., who had died in office. He won re-election 29 times and served continuously in the House until his retirement in 2015. Throughout his career Dingell was a strong advocate for affordable health care for all. Every year he introduced national healthcare legislation, continuing an effort begun by his father in 1943. Representative Dingell was instrumental in the passage of Medicare in 1965, and he played a leading role in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010. In 2015 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. John D. Dingell, Jr. died February 7, 2019 at the age of 92.
Oath of Office for John D. Dingell, Jr., January 3, 1956
H.R. 3764, National Health Insurance Act, January 28, 1957, introduced by John D. Dingell, Jr.
Petition of the Convention of Colored People of Ohio
In early 1849, freedmen of Ohio convened and composed this petition to Congress, urging lawmakers to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
We are an orderly, law abiding, and peace loving people, but when we see our brother, sister, father, or mother, chained and fettered to be dragged into disgraceful bondage, filial and fraternal affection forces us to release the captive and thereby subject ourselves to the penalty of said law, for doing what nature and nature's God imperiously require at our hands.
In the decades preceding the Civil War, Colored Conventions brought black abolitionists together to organize and advocate for emancipation and civil rights. This petition shows the political activism of the black community of Ohio. The president of the Convention, Charles Henry Langston (1817-1892), was a noted activist and educator. Born free in Virginia to a formerly enslaved woman and a wealthy white planter, Langston came of age in Ohio. He and his brother Gideon were the first African-Americans to be admitted to Oberlin College, in 1835. In 1858, Langston stood trial for his role in rescuing John Price, an escaped slave who was kidnapped in Ohio by slave-catchers (the case is known as the Oberlin-Wellington rescue). Langston shared his activism with his two brothers, one of whom, John Mercer Langston, became the first black congressman from Virginia in 1890 (and the last, for another century). And activism and self-expression were inherited by subsequent generations: twentieth century poet, Langston Hughes, was Charles Henry Langston's grandson.
Petitions and Memorials Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, 30th Congress, U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233
Potomac Transportation Line First Class Ticket, submitted with the Stenographer’s Record, Martha Stewart et al. v. The Steamer Sue, United States District Court for the District of Maryland Admiralty Case File No. 90, National Archives at Philadelphia
By Dr. Dennis R. Halpin, Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech University | Rediscovering Black History
Sometimes when researching the past, small seemingly insignificant items can make a huge difference. In this case a stenographer’s receipt helped me draw connections that I had been searching for over the course of 10 years.
On 15 August 1884 a group of black Baltimoreans purchased first-class tickets to board the Steamer Sue, which plied the waters between Maryland and Virginia. The group included four sisters, Martha Stewart, Winnie Stewart, Mary M. Johnson, and Lucy Jones along with the women’s aunt, Pauline Braxton, Mary’s husband James, and Lucy’s husband Charles. About an hour into the voyage, the ship’s chambermaid informed the group that the captain would not permit them to occupy the first class cabin because the ship’s regulations prohibited African Americans from that part of the vessel. The travelers protested their treatment by staying up all night in the ship’s saloon. When the women returned to Baltimore they filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore, Chesapeake, and Richmond Steamboat Company.[1]
I first encountered the Steamer Sue case approximately ten years ago while doing preliminary research for my forthcoming book on Baltimore’s early civil rights struggles, A Brotherhood of Liberty (The University of Pennsylvania Press, Spring 2019). The case was immediately intriguing. It took place approximately eight years before Homer Plessey initiated his own test case by crossing the color line on a Louisiana train.
In addition, it bore striking resemblance to Rosa Park’s act of defiance nearly seventy years later on a Montgomery bus. But the short article in the Baltimore Sun said nothing of the women’s intentions or motivations. A number of questions sprang to mind: Did the women engage in an act of civil disobedience? If so, how did they plan their actions? Did they receive support from activists in Baltimore’s black communities? These questions all piqued my interest.
Read More at The Rediscovering Black History Blog
In the early 1970s, hundreds of Americans petitioned Congress to make the square dance our national folk dance.
One petitioner praised square dancing as “a clean, wholesome way to enjoy associating with other people in any part of our land.” Indeed, the petitions came from all over—from New York and California, from Kentucky and Idaho, from as far away as the territory of Guam.
Many of the petitioners were affiliated with local, regional, or state square dance clubs or associations. The petition above came from Bill Burke, a member of the Polka Dots.
His fellow petitioners were from the Silver Buckles, Krazy Daizies, Ankle Knockers, See Saws, Curli Qs, Circle Squares, Surf Twirlers, Peat Dusters, Highland Hillbillies, Stanislaus Stumblers, Bootjack Stompers, and Squarenaders, not to mention the Squares & Flares, Boots & Bloomers, Skirts & Flirts, Swing Ding Dandies—and others too numerous to mention.
Since the early 1970s, 32 bills or resolutions elevating the square dance to national folk dance status have been proposed. Most of these attempts went nowhere. In 1982, a joint resolution designating the square dance the “national folk dance of the United States of America for 1982 and 1983” was passed. Come 1984, however, America was once again officially dance-less. Hearings on the matter were held that year, but no further action was taken on the bills then under consideration.
The most recent legislative attempt to honor the square dance was the 2003 Promenade Act. It garnered 29 cosponsors but died in committee without coming to a vote.
Square Dance Petitions Received by the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, 93rd Congress, Records of the U.S. House, Record Group 233
If aliens had landed in the United States any time between 1880 and 1940 they would quickly be convinced that we were a nation at war with butter substitute. Oleomargarine is everywhere in the records of Congress during this period. The Committees on Agriculture, Manufacture, and Ways and Means were all involved. Dairymen were sending their representatives petitions defending butter and decrying the fate of the nation if this interloper called “oleo” were to become a permanent fixture in American households.
C.C. Buell, a dairy farmer from Rock Falls, Ill., convinced some fellas of “at least average intelligence” at the Grange picnic to sign this petition saying there ought to be a law against oleo because “its continued use may be the cause of pestilential diseases in our large cities.” Nothing says hot button issue like fake butter!
Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Agriculture during the 46th Congress (HR46A-H2.4); Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, RG 233; Washington, DC.
