FIRST REGULAR SESSION
97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES BUTLER (Sponsor), ROORDA, PACE, ELLINGTON, SCHIEFFER AND WEBB (Co-sponsors).
WHEREAS, more than 30 years ago, the Hall of Famous Missourians was established with the induction and installation of bronze busts of four famous Missourians: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) in 1982, George Washington Carver and Susan Elizabeth Blow in 1983, and Thomas Hart Benton in 1985; and
WHEREAS, since 1991, Speakers of the House of Representatives have raised money, commissioned busts, and inducted an additional 37 Missourians into the Hall of Famous Missourians; and
WHEREAS, Roy Wilkins, born in St. Louis in 1901, was a prominent civil rights activist in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s; and
WHEREAS, Wilkins began his career as a journalist, later becoming editor of The Appeal, an African American newspaper, and The Call; and
WHEREAS, in the 1930s, Wilkins was assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) under Walter Francis White. When W.E.B. Dubois left the organization in 1934, Wilkins replaced him as editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP; and
WHEREAS, in 1950, Wilkins was one of three men who founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), which became the premier civil rights coalition and coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957; and
WHEREAS, in 1955, Roy Wilkins was chosen to be the executive secretary of the NAACP and in 1964, became its executive director; and
WHEREAS, Wilkins believed in achieving reform by legislative means, testifying before many Congressional hearings and conferring with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Wilkins strongly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as represented by the "black power" movements, was a strong critic of racism in any form, regardless of its creed, color, or political motivation, and espoused the principles of nonviolence; and
WHEREAS, Roy Wilkins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson and the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP; and
WHEREAS, during his tenure with the NAACP, it played a pivotal role in leading the nation into the civil rights movement and spearheaded the efforts that led to significant civil rights victories, including Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and
WHEREAS, in 1977, Wilkins retired from the NAACP at the age of 76 and was honored with the title "Director Emeritus of the NAACP"; and
WHEREAS, 2014 will mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is fitting and proper that Roy Wilkins, a man known as the "Senior Statesman" of the United States Civil Rights Movement, be inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we, the members of the Missouri House of Representatives, Ninety-seventh General Assembly, hereby urge the Speaker of the House of Representatives to select Roy Wilkins, St. Louis native and prominent civil rights activist, as a 2014 inductee into the Hall of Famous Missourians, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the historic signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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