The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Remembering Maxine Horner (Executive Calendar)” mentioning James Lankford was published in the Senate section on pages S881-S882 on Feb. 25.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Remembering Maxine Horner
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, in 1932, 11 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Maxine Horner was born in Tulsa, OK. She was Maxine Cissel at the time. She grew up in segregated Greenwood, a district recovering from the devastating effects of the massacre, just a little over a decade before.
Her parents were exceptionally protective and instructed Maxine and her siblings not to go into certain stores in downtown Tulsa, knowing their children wouldn't be welcome. They didn't want their children to experience the pain and humiliation of being told to leave a store or to not sit at that end of the counter.
Her mother once told her, though:
Never let the color of your skin get in the way of achieving your goals. If you put your mind to it, you can do anything and be anyone.
Maxine was part of the first class to graduate from Booker T. Washington High School, which, at the time, was an all-Black school. She was proud of the education she received at Booker T. and spent 2 years studying at Wiley College before returning back to Tulsa.
She got a job working for Congressman James Jones, an opportunity that sparked some political ambitions in her. In her fifties, she returned back to school and received a bachelor's degree from Langston University in 1985. Despite being decades older than her fellow classmates and occasionally being mistaken to be the professor in her class rather than one of the other students, she finished her education.
In 1986, she ran for the Oklahoma State Senate and became one of two women to be elected for the first time into the Oklahoma State Senate as an African American.
Maxine was a true trailblazer. She worked hard for her constituents, and she championed education and the arts.
Her life was full of some poetic justice, quite frankly. She grew up in the Greenwood District in the wake of the Tulsa Race Massacre, but in the late 1990s, she sponsored the State legislation that created the Tulsa Race Riot Commission. She also cofounded the Greenwood Cultural Center. After she left office, she continued to fight for the victims of the massacre and chaired the committee overseeing the search for the burial sites--work that is still going on today.
As a young teen, she recalls going into the Tulsa Union Depot and seeing drinking fountains labeled ``Colored'' and ``White.'' But as a State senator, she sponsored the legislation that created the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, which now occupies the old Tulsa Union Depot building, where they don't have drinking fountains labeled ``Black'' or
``Colored'' and ``White.''
As a student, she attended segregated schools. As a Senator, she championed the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program or what we now call Oklahoma's Promise--a scholarship program for low and middle-
income students in Oklahoma. Oklahoma's Promise helped over 75,000 young Oklahomans pursue higher education. She left quite a legacy.
Two weeks ago, on February 8, Oklahoma lost this transformational giant. Maxine Horner passed away at the age of 88, and she will be certainly missed by her families, and she will be missed by Oklahoma
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