Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke Delivers Remarks at the NAACP’s 115th National Convention

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon and thank you for that kind introduction. It’s a privilege to be here today at the 115th NAACP National Convention.

This convention’s theme – “All In” – reminds us of the members of our movement who risked their lives and their freedom to advance the cause of justice. Thurgood Marshall narrowly escaped lynching. Dr. King was assassinated. John Lewis was beaten within an inch of his life. Medgar Evers was murdered. Countless others were killed, beaten and imprisoned.

While I hope no one in this room is ever asked to bear such risks, we should remember the sacrifices of those who came before us as we measure what “All In” means in today’s fight for justice, and what we must do to honor their legacy.

Indeed, this year has offered us many opportunities to reflect on the legacy of the civil rights movement in America. On July 2, we marked the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That Act – which is the bedrock of so much of our work at the Civil Rights Division – was in no small part a product of efforts by the NAACP.

These anniversaries remind us of the progress we have made over the past 60 years, and the NAACP’s tremendous contributions to fairness and justice. But at the Civil Rights Division, we also view these anniversaries as a call to continued action; a call to redouble our efforts and reaffirm our commitment to finishing the march toward equality that our ancestors began.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act and other federal laws give us an array of tools to fight discrimination and safeguard constitutional rights. We use these tools to confront the injustices and inequities that flow from discrimination wherever we find them.

One area that remains a critical priority for the U.S. Department of Justice is ensuring that law enforcement officials carry out their jobs lawfully and without bias. Our fight to ensure constitutional policing remains as urgent as ever. We have prosecuted officers who abuse their power, including those tied to the tragic deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis; Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee; Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky; and six former officers who tortured and viciously abused two Black men in Rankin County, Mississippi. This group called themselves “The Goon Squad” and they carried out one of the most heinous acts of brutality that we have seen this century. The lead defendant was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

We have investigated law enforcement agencies engaged in a “pattern or practice” of conduct that violates the Constitution and other laws, including in Minneapolis, Louisville, Memphis, New York City, Louisiana and Lexington, Mississippi. 

Just last month, we announced our findings that the City of Phoenix and its police department have engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct, including discriminating against Black, Hispanic and Native American people when enforcing the law and using excessive force, including deadly force.

Wherever we have found violations, we’ve invited city leaders, community members and other stakeholders, like the NAACP, to work with us in charting a path to reform.

Another core mission of the division is protecting the right to vote. But we cannot ignore the voter suppression laws spreading like poison ivy across our country.

Discriminatory and burdensome restrictions on access to the ballot are undermining the rights of Black voters and, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has constricted our tools to counter this discrimination. But that’s not stopping us. We have filed lawsuits in Texas, Georgia and Arizona, and more issued over 30 statements of interest across the country, because every eligible American deserves a voice in our democracy.

We are also working to confront the unfortunate rise in hate crimes that we are seeing across the country. We have charged more than 120 defendants with hate crimes in over 110 cases since January 2021. These include the men who tragically killed Ahmaud Arbery just because he was Black, the defendant responsible for the murder of 10 Black people at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and the defendant responsible for the tragic murder of a Black trans woman named Dime Doe in South Carolina. We do this work because racially motivated, white supremacist, anti LGBTQI+, xenophobic, Islamophobic or antisemitic acts of hatred and violence have no place in our democracy. Period.

At the Justice Department, we know that every student deserves to learn in diverse classrooms that welcome and empower them. We are working to end the school-to-prison pipeline and pushing to stop the disproportionate discipline and incarceration imposed on Black students. And we have secured many victories in recent years to combat discrimination and harassment in our nation’s schools affecting racial minorities, female and LGBTQI+ students and students with disabilities.

Finally, we are ramping up the fight for environmental justice. We know that climate change disproportionately affects communities of color. For example, according to 2021 EPA findings, Black Americans are 34% more likely to live in areas with unacceptably high projected increases in childhood asthma diagnoses. We have launched multiple investigations to ensure that no person’s ability to live a healthy life is dictated by their race or their ZIP code. Last May, for example, we secured a groundbreaking settlement to ensure that residents in Lowndes County, Alabama, have access to safe and effective septic and wastewater management systems. Whether we are talking about lead-laced water, illegal dumping or exposure to raw sewage, we cannot tolerate injustices like these in our communities.

And we are working to ensure that the gateway to opportunity and the ability to amass generational wealth is open to all. We fight to end modern-day redlining. Our Combating Redlining Initiative, launched along with Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2021, has brought $122 million in relief to communities where banks and financial institutions have failed to provide equal access to loans, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, and Tulsa. We are also working to address appraisal discrimination. Assessors too often undervalue Black-owned homes as compared with similar white-owned homes.

Too many of our jails and prisons woefully mistreat incarcerated people, and we strive to end this. For example, in an investigation we found that Parchman Farm in Mississippi failed to provide adequate mental health treatment, failed to take sufficient suicide-prevention measures, subjected people to prolonged solitary confinement in egregious conditions and failed to protect incarcerated people from violence at the hand of other incarcerated people. For this and for two other Mississippi prisons, we identified remedial measures to implement reforms. People do not surrender their rights at the jailhouse door.

When the approximately 600,000 people released per year have finished paying their debt to society, they face barriers to re-entry. Barriers to basic human needs such as housing and jobs. We're working to lift these barriers.

All of this is just a small sample of our work.

Though our efforts to protect civil rights are many, we recognize that an “All In” fight for equality requires just that – all of us. Never has that been truer than it is right now. As one of the great founders of the NAACP W.E.B. Du Bois once noted:

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work and tomorrow comes the harvest . . .”

I promise you that the Justice Department, the people’s Justice Department, will continue to stand alongside you and all those who work and fight for equal justice. We will not give up. We will not wait for “some more convenient season.” We are all in now and we will remain all in until we can all reap the harvest. Thank you.