February 25, 2021 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S881 on and chatted for just a moment or there weren’t enough carriers to de- This situation is grave and serious. two. liver it. In fact, a report from the Post- For a lot of people, the delay of a day It was a tough assignment. They al Service Office of the Inspector Gen- or two in receiving mail is just an in- were no longer showing up at 2 p.m. in eral in early February found that the convenience; for others, it could be a the afternoon as usual but sometimes 7 reason there weren’t enough postal car- matter of life or death literally when and 8 o’clock at night. They kept up riers to deliver the mail is that the ad- so many medicines are moving through with their responsibility. ministrators just hadn’t bothered re- the mail, prescriptions and medica- I say that because I want to preface moving the names of employees who no tions that people count on for their these remarks by letting everyone longer worked there. This meant they livelihood. And it really is something know that I am proud of the Postal weren’t able to bring in additional staff that has been so fundamental in Amer- Service. I will fight to keep it in busi- when needed to deliver a growing back- ica. ness serving America, and I know that log of delayed mail. We have to ask the basic question: it is going through extreme hardship at The report noted that more than What is going on here? I am happy to the present time. 60,000—60,000—pieces of mail had been report that yesterday the Biden admin- But 2 nights ago, I was on a town delayed in Chicago neighborhoods over istration announced that they were ap- meeting call with Alderman Leslie a period of several weeks. These delays pointing three new Governors to fill Hairston of the Fifth Ward in Chicago. are not new, and they are certainly not three vacancies on the Postal Board of She asked me to come on the call be- confined to Chicago. U.S. Postal Serv- Governors. Those vacancies have been cause of the problems that she is hav- ice customers in many States have en- too long in festering and creating the ing in the Hyde Park area. She wanted dured delays and other problems with situation we have today. me to hear some of the situations that mail service for months. Veterans are The Postmaster General, Mr. DeJoy, they were facing in the Fifth Ward. going without medication that has who came to this position in con- The U.S. Postal Service, unfortu- been mailed to them from the VA. troversy when he started suggesting he nately, is a lifeline that is being Small businesses are missing delivery was going to delay the delivery of bal- threatened at the current time. So dates. Families are missing paychecks lots in the previous election of Novem- many people in Chicago and all across and not receiving notices of premiums ber 3, is adamant that he is going to the country depend on it for regular, due in time. continue on his mission. We have to in- prompt mail service to deliver every- Timely, reliable mail delivery is al- tervene on behalf of the people whom thing from birthday cards to bills, ways important, and it is especially we represent and on behalf of this cards, checks, and medicine. Yet, for critical now. Receiving medications country. months now, mail delivery has been and other important deliveries enables I stand by the Postal Service. I be- slow and unpredictable for millions of people to stay safely at home rather lieve in the men and women who make Americans. than to venturing out and risking it work. And everyone I have met—cer- I have heard from many Chicago-area COVID infections. tainly in my neighborhood and the residents, just like I heard the other Regular mail service helps sustain ones who have been coming to my night, and small businesses that have the economy during an unprecedented home over the years—almost became a gone upwards of a month—a month— public health crisis by providing a low- part of the family. I knew all about without the delivery of mail. These cost shipping option for small busi- their families and some of the prob- delays are having a devastating impact nesses that are struggling to survive. lems and wonderful things that were on the lives of families in my State. Yet, rather than focusing on how to fix happening in their lives. That was part One Chicago man said that after re- the current delivery delays, U.S. Postal of the experience, the postal experi- ceiving no mail for 3 weeks, he went to Service leaders are now considering ence, in smalltown America that we the local post office to check where his changes that could result in higher want to preserve. But when it comes to mail was. He waited in line for 6 hours prices and even more delays. This is no the big cities, we have to be sensitive before he finally was given his mail. plan to fix the Postal Service; it is a to that as well. When massive amounts Another woman wrote me that she wor- plan to sabotage the Postal Service in of mail are being held in trailer trucks ries that missing bills will hurt her order to benefit its commercial com- behind the post office, not being sorted credit rating, making it even harder petitors. and delivered, it is just absolutely, for her to make ends meet. Another Cut service, raise prices, then lose positively unacceptable. woman wrote that she worries that customers because you cut services and If COVID–19 among the workforce is missing bills will hurt not only her raised prices, and then just repeat that one of the reasons, let’s address that credit rating but could hurt her person- destructive cycle again and again until directly—in terms of vaccinations, No. ally by denying basic prescriptions and there are little or no customers left— 1; in terms of replacement employees medicine that she counts on. Small that is the plan of the Postal Service or temporary employees, No. 2; what- business owners are losing customers under Postmaster General DeJoy, and ever it takes to keep the Postal Service because their mail-order deliveries are Congress needs to step in. We must de- at the highest quality. delayed or just flat disappear. mand that the Postmaster General im- I urge my colleagues, when you go But this vivid example that brings plement new policies and operational home, if you are hearing the same sto- these together is the story of Ms. changes immediately to end delivery ries about the U.S. Postal Service, let’s Carmella McCoy Gonzalez. She has a delays in Chicago and across the coun- make this a bipartisan response. Fami- disability. She is unable to travel real- try. Congress needs to ensure the Post- lies and businesses and vulnerable indi- ly much outside her home—restrictions al Service has all the resources and viduals across America are counting on that have become even more con- tools it needs to provide reliable and us. straining during the pandemic. Ms. affordable services during this critical I yield the floor. McCoy Gonzalez suffers from high time and to come out of this pandemic The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Sen- blood pressure and a heart condition, on secure financial footing. ator from Oklahoma. making her regular delivery of medica- Our Founders understood that reli- REMEMBERING MAXINE HORNER tion essential. However, she reports able and affordable mail service was es- Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in that for the past few months, she and sential to our economy and our na- 1932, 11 years after the Tulsa Race Mas- her neighbors are lucky if they get tional unity. The Postal Service is the sacre, Maxine Horner was born in mail delivered one day a week. She one public service that is so important Tulsa, OK. She was Maxine Cissel at told my office that a shipment of medi- that it is actually mentioned by name the time. She grew up in segregated cine sent on February 8 didn’t reach in the Constitution. We cannot allow Greenwood, a district recovering from her home until February 23, while oth- its temporary custodians, appointed by the devastating effects of the massacre, ers just simply didn’t arrive at all. the previous administration, to kill it just a little over a decade before. When they reached out to the local with a death of a thousand cuts in Her parents were exceptionally pro- post office, they were told that they order to enrich private competitors, es- tective and instructed Maxine and her wouldn’t be getting any mail because pecially during this pandemic. siblings not to go into certain stores in

VerDate Sep 11 2014 04:14 Feb 26, 2021 Jkt 019060 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 0624 Sfmt 0634 E:\CR\FM\G25FE6.019 S25FEPT1 dlhill on DSK120RN23PROD with SENATE S882 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE February 25, 2021 downtown Tulsa, knowing their chil- African American who were elected in be able to speak with him. And she dren wouldn’t be welcome. They didn’t the State senate that year—the first waited outside of his office until he want their children to experience the ladies who were African American to came out of his office. He came out for pain and humiliation of being told to be elected into our State senate. The lunch and walked out with a job offer leave a store or to not sit at that end other lady was a dear friend, Vicki after that. of the counter. Miles-LaGrange. She is younger. She In 1986, she decided to run for State Her mother once told her, though: was born in 1953 in a segregated hos- senate. This was the same year Maxine Never let the color of your skin get in the pital in Oklahoma City. ran as well. Her dad, a former indus- way of achieving your goals. If you put your She grew up in a loving home with trial arts teacher, helped fix up her mind to it, you can do anything and be any- her parents and older sister. Her par- campaign headquarters. Her mother one. ents were well-respected educators in and her mother’s best friend were her Maxine was part of the first class to Oklahoma City. They both got their campaign managers, and she won that graduate from Booker T. Washington master’s degrees from the University of race and unseated Senator Porter, a 22- High School, which, at the time, was Oklahoma in 1955, just 7 years after year incumbent. an all-Black school. She was proud of Ada Lois Sipuel won her case at the When you look at Vicki’s life, there the education she received at Booker Supreme Court to allow Black Oklaho- are a lot of firsts. Along with Maxine T. and spent 2 years studying at Wiley mans to even attend the University of Horner, she was the first African- College before returning back to Tulsa. Oklahoma. American female to be elected to the She got a job working for Congress- As a young girl, she was interested in Oklahoma State Senate. In 1993, she man James Jones, an opportunity that government. And when her friend’s became the first African-American sparked some political ambitions in mother, Hannah Atkins, decided to run woman to become the U.S. attorney for her. In her fifties, she returned back to for the Oklahoma House of Representa- the Western District of Oklahoma. A school and received a bachelor’s degree tives, Vicki helped out, even as a teen- year later, in 1994, President Clinton from Langston University in 1985. De- ager. She became what they put to- appointed her to be the U.S. district spite being decades older than her fel- gether called Hannah’s Helpers, a judge for the Western District of Okla- low classmates and occasionally being group of young people who campaigned homa. She was the first African-Amer- mistaken to be the professor in her for Hannah Atkins. And Atkins won ican Federal judge among the six class rather than one of the other stu- her race and became the first Black fe- States that make up the Tenth Circuit dents, she finished her education. male to serve in the Oklahoma House of that Federal jurisdiction. In 1986, she ran for the Oklahoma She was appointed by Chief Justice State Senate and became one of two of Representatives. Vicki attended McGuinness High William Rehnquist in the U.S. Supreme women to be elected for the first time School. She stayed involved in a little Court as a member of the International into the Oklahoma State Senate as an bit of politics there, participating in Judicial Relations Committee of the African American. Judicial Conference of the United Maxine was a true trailblazer. She Girls State. Asking a mutual friend, Patrick McGuigan, who I am convinced States. worked hard for her constituents, and Shortly after, when she became a had a crush on her when they were in she championed education and the arts. Federal judge, the horrific genocide un- high school—asking Patrick about that Her life was full of some poetic jus- folded in Rwanda. Vicki advocated for tice, quite frankly. She grew up in the time, he recounts the stories and has an independent judiciary in Rwanda Greenwood District in the wake of the written even in some of his writings and was part of a group of inter- Tulsa Race Massacre, but in the late about how Vicki went to Girls State national legal experts who were sent to 1990s, she sponsored the State legisla- and was elected governor of the Okla- Rwanda to help reform the system. She tion that created the Tulsa Race Riot homa Girls State Program that year, made eight trips to Rwanda at her own Commission. She also cofounded the but when the sponsoring organization personal risk. In 2006, she was awarded Greenwood Cultural Center. After she decided who they were going to send to the Fern Holland Courageous Lawyer left office, she continued to fight for Girls Nation, they for the first time did Award from the Oklahoma Bar Asso- the victims of the massacre and not send the governor; they chose to ciation. chaired the committee overseeing the send the lieutenant governor. That is In 2013, she was inducted into the search for the burial sites—work that what Vicki faced as she grew up. Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the highest is still going on today. She attended Vassar College, and at honor an Oklahoman can receive for As a young teen, she recalls going 18 became a delegate at the Democratic their contributions to the State. into the Tulsa Union Depot and seeing Oklahoma State Convention. It was She received many other awards, in- drinking fountains labeled ‘‘Colored’’ there that she met Carl Albert, who cluding the Oklahoma Bar Associa- and ‘‘White.’’ But as a State senator, told her that if she ever ended up in DC tion’s Women Trailblazer Award. she sponsored the legislation that cre- to look him up and to come work for In the early 1960s, she was so inspired ated the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, him. Well, that is all you would have to by President Kennedy’s inaugural ad- which now occupies the old Tulsa tell Vicki. She attended Howard Uni- dress that she wrote to him to say how Union Depot building, where they don’t versity Law School, walked right into happy she was that he was President. have drinking fountains labeled the Speaker of the House’s office one One of his advisers actually wrote her ‘‘Black’’ or ‘‘Colored’’ and ‘‘White.’’ day here at the Capitol and convinced a letter back. She kept that letter, As a student, she attended segregated Carl Albert that he should remember and, in fact, she hung it in her office schools. As a Senator, she championed his offer, and she became an intern in while she was a judge. She was quoted the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access his office immediately while she pur- as saying that, above all else, she is a Program or what we now call Okla- sued her law degree. career public servant. There was a homa’s Promise—a scholarship pro- This was not an unusual thing for newspaper article when she took her gram for low and middle-income stu- Vicki. After graduating law school, she very last case in 2018 as a Federal dents in Oklahoma. Oklahoma’s Prom- clerked for a Federal judge in Houston, judge, and it quoted back to 1994 when ise helped over 75,000 young Oklaho- joined the criminal division of the De- she was in front of this Senate for con- mans pursue higher education. She left partment of Justice, where she helped firmation hearings, being the first Afri- quite a legacy. prosecute Nazi war criminals. can-American judge ever in the Tenth Two weeks ago, on February 8, Okla- In 1983, she decided she wanted to re- Circuit. And she said this: homa lost this transformational giant. turn to Oklahoma. So she returned, My race will not determine my decisions. Maxine Horner passed away at the age though she was rejected for an office in She said: I don’t want to be known as of 88, and she will be certainly missed the U.S. Attorney’s Office—ironic be- a good Black judge. I want to be a re- by her families, and she will be missed cause later she became the U.S. attor- spected and good and fair judge. by Oklahoma. ney for the Western District. She Vicki Miles-LaGrange, that is ex- REMEMBERING VICKI MILES-LAGRANGE walked right into the district attor- actly how we remember you. Mr. President, I did mention that in ney’s office, Bob Macy’s office, resume Oklahoma is proud of these two la- 1986 she was one of two ladies who were in hand, no appointment, and asked to dies and what they have done. We are

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