Racially Motivated Violence

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:40 a.m., in room 2237, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon, John Conyers, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Conyers, Edwards, Hall, Sensenbrenner, Kindness, and McCoUum. Staff present: Thomas W. Hutchison, counsel; Oliver Quinn, assistant counsel; and Raymond Smietanka, associate counsel. Mr. Conyers. The subcommittee will come to order. This is the first of a series of hearings on what appears to be an increase in incidents in recent years of criminal violence directed against minority group citizens. I welcome my colleagues who have joined us, and we will begin the hearings by approving, as is necessary, the coverage of this hearing by videotape and photography, that motion pictures and other things be permitted in accordance with rule 5 of the rules of procedure. If there is no objection, permission will be granted. Mr. Sensenbrenner. I am reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, and I will object. I am very strongly opposed to violence against minority groups or anyone else in this society. But this is the second hearing that has been held on this subject by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. In the last Congress the Subcommittee on Crime, which the gentleman from Michigan chaired, held a hearing subsequent to the election. That hearing proved to be a three-ring circus. There was a representative of the Ku Klux Klan who deliberately obstructed and interrupted the hearing, and as a result, the news media representatives in attendance, in violation of subsection 6 of the committee's rule 5, went out in the middle of the hearing into the hallway. The result was the Ku Klux Klan representative got more media coverage than did the witnesses before the committee. :