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 Vicki Miles-LaGrange (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Richard Burr was published in the Senate section on pages S882-S883 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 Vicki Miles-LaGrange
Mr. President, I did mention that in 1986 she was one of two ladies who were African American who were elected in the State senate that year--the first ladies who were African American to be elected into our State senate. The other lady was a dear friend, Vicki Miles-LaGrange. She is younger. She was born in 1953 in a segregated hospital in Oklahoma City.
She grew up in a loving home with her parents and older sister. Her parents were well-respected educators in Oklahoma City. They both got their master's degrees from the University of Oklahoma in 1955, just 7 years after Ada Lois Sipuel won her case at the Supreme Court to allow Black Oklahomans to even attend the University of Oklahoma.
As a young girl, she was interested in government. And when her friend's mother, Hannah Atkins, decided to run for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Vicki helped out, even as a teenager. She became what they put together called Hannah's Helpers, a group of young people who campaigned for Hannah Atkins. And Atkins won her race and became the first Black female to serve in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
Vicki attended McGuinness High School. She stayed involved in a little bit of politics there, participating in Girls State. Asking a mutual friend, Patrick McGuigan, who I am convinced had a crush on her when they were in high school--asking Patrick about that time, he recounts the stories and has written even in some of his writings about how Vicki went to Girls State and was elected governor of the Oklahoma Girls State Program that year, but when the sponsoring organization decided who they were going to send to Girls Nation, they for the first time did not send the governor; they chose to send the lieutenant governor. That is what Vicki faced as she grew up.
She attended Vassar College, and at 18 became a delegate at the Democratic Oklahoma State Convention. It was there that she met Carl Albert, who told her that if she ever ended up in DC to look him up and to come work for him. Well, that is all you would have to tell Vicki. She attended Howard University Law School, walked right into the Speaker of the House's office one day here at the Capitol and convinced Carl Albert that he should remember his offer, and she became an intern in his office immediately while she pursued her law degree.
This was not an unusual thing for Vicki. After graduating law school, she clerked for a Federal judge in Houston, joined the criminal division of the Department of Justice, where she helped prosecute Nazi war criminals.
In 1983, she decided she wanted to return to Oklahoma. So she returned, though she was rejected for an office in the U.S. Attorney's Office--ironic because later she became the U.S. attorney for the Western District. She walked right into the district attorney's office, Bob Macy's office, resume in hand, no appointment, and asked to be able to speak with him. And she waited outside of his office until he came out of his office. He came out for lunch and walked out with a job offer after that.
In 1986, she decided to run for State senate. This was the same year Maxine ran as well. Her dad, a former industrial arts teacher, helped fix up her campaign headquarters. Her mother and her mother's best friend were her campaign managers, and she won that race and unseated Senator Porter, a 22-year incumbent.
When you look at Vicki's life, there are a lot of firsts. Along with Maxine Horner, she was the first African-American female to be elected to the Oklahoma State Senate. In 1993, she became the first African-
American woman to become the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. A year later, in 1994, President Clinton appointed her to be the U.S. district judge for the Western District of Oklahoma. She was the first African-American Federal judge among the six States that make up the Tenth Circuit of that Federal jurisdiction.
She was appointed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the U.S. Supreme Court as a member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Shortly after, when she became a Federal judge, the horrific genocide unfolded in Rwanda. Vicki advocated for an independent judiciary in Rwanda and was part of a group of international legal experts who were sent to Rwanda to help reform the system. She made eight trips to Rwanda at her own personal risk. In 2006, she was awarded the Fern Holland Courageous Lawyer Award from the Oklahoma Bar Association.
In 2013, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, the highest honor an Oklahoman can receive for their contributions to the State.
She received many other awards, including the Oklahoma Bar Association's Women Trailblazer Award.
In the early 1960s, she was so inspired by President Kennedy's inaugural address that she wrote to him to say how happy she was that he was President. One of his advisers actually wrote her a letter back. She kept that letter, and, in fact, she hung it in her office while she was a judge. She was quoted as saying that, above all else, she is a career public servant. There was a newspaper article when she took her very last case in 2018 as a Federal judge, and it quoted back to 1994 when she was in front of this Senate for confirmation hearings, being the first African-American judge ever in the Tenth Circuit. And she said this:
My race will not determine my decisions.
She said: I don't want to be known as a good Black judge. I want to be a respected and good and fair judge.
Vicki Miles-LaGrange, that is exactly how we remember you.
Oklahoma is proud of these two ladies and what they have done. We are proud to call them fellow Oklahomans in the trailblazing that they have done.
Thanks for your leadership
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. BURR. Mr. President, we are all representative of heroes and idols and, clearly, my colleague from Oklahoma appoints several out from his home State.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I complete my remarks before we go to the vote this afternoon.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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