Tempers in the Arkansas Senate frayed Tuesday, with the chamber handily defeating a Senate resolution that one of its sponsors said was aimed at commemorating the role Black people played in American history but that opponents said included misinformation.
One senator was censured for calling a colleague a derogatory name as the latter spoke from the well of the Senate about a different resolution that he had sponsored.
The Senate voted 22-4 to reject the 11-page Senate Concurrent Resolution 6 by Sens. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, and Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch.
Stubblefield, Sullivan, and Sens. Bob Ballinger, R-Ozark, and Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, were the only votes for adopting the resolution.
Close to 2 p.m. Tuesday, Stubblefield began reading page after page of the resolution, which he said was the same as one passed by the South Dakota Legislature.
The resolution discusses contributions made by Black people throughout American history and cites times when Democrats worked against improving the condition of Black Americans.
"God created everyone equal," Stubblefield said. "We are all equal. We need to work together to try to make it happen."
Stubblefield said the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research had been asked to "double fact-check" the resolution.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_WkflaD5dY]
"We wanted to make sure that every date, every name, I believe it was thoroughly fact-checked," he said.
But Senate Democratic leader Keith Ingram of West Memphis questioned whether the Bureau of Legislative Research vetted the Senate resolution to ensure it included correct information.
"Yet as I read this [resolution], it says that President Kennedy in 1960 didn't sign an executive order," he said.
"I believe that would come as a shock to historians since President Kennedy did not take office until January of 1961," Ingram said.
Asked afterward if the bureau vetted the information in the resolution, bureau Director Marty Garrity replied that "a part of the bureau's bill drafting process is to review the information and format of the resolutions."
She said she wouldn't comment on an individual lawmaker's bill.
SENATOR CENSURED
In a voice vote with a few dissenters, the Senate voted to censure Sen. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, for calling Garner "a dumbass" in an exchange while he spoke from the well of the Senate about a different resolution that he had sponsored about Venezuela.
Flowers is Black, and Garner is white.
Flowers told senators, "I don't feel like I should be censured."
She said she tried to object and call a point of order on Garner for "getting away from the contents" of SCR6 during debate.
But Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, who proposed censuring Flowers, told senators that "it is inappropriate ... to call one of our senators a name at the well.
"It is not right. It needs to stop, and it is going to be recorded in Senate business that Sen. Garner was called a name," she said.
During the debate on SCR6 after Stubblefield stopped reading it, Flowers said she questioned the veracity of some of the information in the resolution.
"I think you always need to consider even if some things are reported and actually written down as true, you got to consider who the author was and you have to consider also the many things that were left out," she said.
Flowers pressed Stubblefield on whether "you agree if you really wanted to do something, that you would talk about reparations for the other descendants of those slaves, who have been abused ... and were segregated on the gym floors?
[DOCUMENT: Resolution » arkansasonline.com/210resolution/]
"Would you agree that reparations are in order now for the Black community?"
Stubblefield replied that he would agree that people need to know the truth about the nation's history, whether it is good, bad or ugly. He said there has been an ugly part of the country's history, and he hopes and prays it doesn't happen again.
Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said she was concerned about the resolution stating that "many critics today wrongly assert that the United States Constitution is a pro-slavery document, pointing to the three-fifths clause and claiming the United States Constitution says that African-Americans are only three-fifths of a person."
Chesterfield said the resolution states that America was not a major world leader in the African slave trade, but America was the recipient of a plethora of slaves, many of whom were sent to other countries first.
"We do not need to whitewash our history," she said. "If we are going to deal with our history, let us deal with all of our history."
But Sullivan said he spent a lot of time and hours making sure that the information in the resolution was correct and changes were made in the resolution after the information was vetted by the Bureau of Legislative Research.
"We have done a poor job of educating our citizens about the contributions of African-Americans," he said.
"The intent of this is to start this discussion and continue," Sullivan said. "If there are disagreements, let's talk about them and study that."
Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, said, "We are spending more time debating a resolution that does nothing except get the opposition of the people supposed to be" commemorated for Black history month.
"That tells you, you've got a problem," he said.
"I have been down here for 14 years [in the Senate and House of Representatives]," Hendren said. "With all due respect, this is probably the worst resolution I have ever seen."
Hendren said he made a motion two years ago for the Senate to delay consideration of all resolutions until the last week of the regular session. He said the Senate approved his motion because "we started this kind of silliness" with resolutions.
He said he and Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, previously proposed a bill to create a bipartisan race relations subcommittee "instead of talking about a bunch of points you cherry-pick out of history to say our party is superior" in race relations.
"It is so hard for me to sit here and see us waste our time and the staff's time with resolutions on Venezuela presidents, or Obamacare or saying the Democratic Party was racist back then," Hendren said.
"I hope we stop this stuff," Hendren said.
But Garner said the issue of communism in Venezuela comes up often in his Senate district and issues of the Chinese Communist Party and "what they have done to us comes up when I talk down in south Arkansas."
The Arkansas Senate can take stands on issues that it typically doesn't get to by approving resolutions on these matters, he said, and that's not a waste of time.
"We have a right to vote down any resolution you don't want," Garner said. "You have a right to bring any resolution you want to."
Afterward, Senate President Pro Tempore Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, was asked by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette whether he was embarrassed by the Senate's proceedings regarding the resolution.
"I want us to show more composure and more compassion for each other," he said. "What I do want is for us to be more procedurally correct, so I did not like that part."