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The Cold War, the Olympics, & the Forgotten Congressional Gold Medal | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
In the spring of 1980, the United States government faced a foreign-policy decision with Olympic-sized consequences. The previous fall, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan to expand its sphere of influence. It was a shocking decision, made even more so given that Moscow was slated to host the international community at the 1980 summer Olympic games in July.Following the invasion, lawmakers in Congress questioned whether America should allow its delegation of athletes to compete in Moscow. To allow U.S. athletes to attend the games risked sending a message to the world that the federal government condoned the Soviets’ war. Blocking their participation, however, meant dashing the dreams of hundreds of young Americans who had trained for years to compete in the storied sporting event.For four decades, the Cold War standoff between the American and Soviet superpowers had left the world on edge. Proxy wars and the threat of nuclear conflict had stalked the years after World War II. But it was the pre-World War II Olympics in Nazi Germany’s Berlin in 1936 that legislators suddenly invoked during debate over whether the United States should send a delegation to Moscow.In January 1980, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by chairman Clement Zablocki of Wisconsin, held a hearing with members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) where they discussed the ramifications of the Soviet invasion and whether to send an American delegation to the games. “These are the questions that were asked in 1936, when the Olympics were held in Germany,” Zablocki said. Republican John Buchanan of Alabama extended the questioning: “Would you agree or disagree that when Nazi Germany passed a law stripping Jews of their citizenship just before the games in 1936 and then went on to the Holocaust and all the rest, that that was something more than politics, that that was crime, or is it just politics to be disregarded?”History Repeating Itself?The 1936 Olympics would be remembered in America for stunning athletic achievements in the face of hate and Adolf Hitler’s campaign of White supremacy. Jesse Owens, a 23-year-old Black man from Alabama, won four track and field gold medals that year. And during the men’s 400-meter relay, Owens and his teammates, which included future U.S. Representative Ralph Harold Metcalfe of Illinois, who was also Black, set the world record. “There was talk of boycotting Hitler and his doctrine of Nordic supremacy,” Metcalfe later recalled. “But we thought we would make a contribution. There were more negroes on that team than any previous United States Olympic team. We won and it stuck a pin in the balloon of Hitler’s doctrine.”Congress did consider boycotting the Olympics in 1936. In the leadup to the games, Representative Emanuel Celler of New York introduced two bills he called “weapons to use against Germany” and which he hoped would alert the nation to what he called “the goings-on in Germany we may regard as a definite threat to the security of our own freedom, not merely where religion is concerned, but personal liberty of every kind.” Celler reminded the House that “it is an established fact that hate or prejudice or intolerance never remains limited to a small portion of existence—either it is overthrown completely and liberalism takes its place, or it grows and strengthens its hold until it has choked liberty everywhere and from every possible angle.” Celler’s bills—H. J. Res. 381, which would have boycotted America’s participation in the games by prohibiting the use of funds to send U.S. athletes to Europe, and H. Res. 368, to ensure Americans who held German debt be paid fair value—both expired in committee.Celler wasn’t alone in his opposition. Representative William Citron of Connecticut had noted earlier in August 1935 that he “object[ed] to participating in these games if they are to be held in Germany. I object to sending our youth to Germany. . . . The youth of the world meet to promote good sportsmanship, brotherly feeling between the peoples of various nationalities and races, the fundamental ideals of democracy—equality and justice.”But despite Members like Celler, who later served as Judiciary Chairman, and Citron, who lost re-election in 1938 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942, no formal protest or boycott emerged from the 74th Congress (1935–1937). Just a few months prior to the 1936 games, Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles when it occupied the Rhineland and persecuted Jewish citizens. The United States attended the games in Berlin anyway. Three years later, Adolph Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland setting off World War II.A BoycottIt was that history that informed debate in Congress as the 1980 games in Moscow approached. On January 24, 1980, the House, by a vote of 386 to 12, passed H. Con. Res. 249 urging the U.S. Olympic Committee to implore the IOC to either move the games from the Soviet Union or cancel them altogether. If the games remained in Moscow, Congress called on the United States and its allies to boycott them and instead “conduct alternative games of their own.” The Senate quickly concurred in a vote of 88 to 4.Two months later, on March 21, 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would boycott the Moscow games. In April, the United States Olympic Committee voted in support of the boycott. Ultimately, more than 60 countries joined the United States in its protest. At home, many of the athletes set to compete in the games expressed frustration with the decision. “My gripes are not against the Soviet athletes, it’s against their government,” said Craig Masback, a favorite in the one-mile track event. John Nonna, a fencing champion, noted, “I’d like to think there are other ways to show our displeasure and put pressure on the Soviets.” A few frustrated Olympians looked for ways to boycott the boycott and sought to compete under the Olympic flag rather than the American flag, but the Carter administration rebuffed that idea.In early June 1980, Representative Frank Annunzio of Illinois, chairman of the House Budget Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, introduced legislation to honor Team USA’s 650 athletes and coaches with a Congressional Gold Medal, one of Congress’s highest civilian honors. “I urge Members of the House, regardless of their personal feelings about the Olympic boycott, to co-sponsor the legislation. This legislation is the least that the Congress can do to recognize our Olympic team, which according to all indications, would have been one of the strongest in our country’s history,” Annunzio said.Annunzio’s bill, H.R. 7482, set aside $50,000 for the medals. To keep costs down, the proposal allowed for the medals to be gold-plated, rather than solid gold. The bill enjoyed widespread bipartisan support and gained 228 co-sponsors in a matter of weeks.The House took up Annunzio’s bill on June 30. “We are here today for one purpose—to honor dedication, sacrifice and, most of all, athletic achievement,” Annunzio said during debate that day. Republican Norman Shumway of California, who served with Annunzio on the Banking Committee, spoke next. “The congressional medals that we will be voting on today can never take the place of a genuine, gold Olympic medal,” he said. “However, it is one small way for our Nation to express gratitude to our Olympic athletes. The 1980 summer Olympics will best be remembered, not by who competed, but rather by who did not. The Congressional Gold Medal will serve to remind us and future generations as well, that we as a nation will never forsake our principles of freedom—not even for the cherished, Olympic gold, silver, and bronze medals.”Annunzio’s measure quickly passed the House and the Senate; President Carter signed the bill into law on July 8. Officials invited the Olympians to a ceremony at the Capitol on July 30, 1980. More than 450 athletes and coaches attended the event. In response, the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 summer Olympic games held in Los Angeles, California.The Medal that Time ForgotDespite Representative Shumway’s hope that the 1980 Congressional Gold Medal would stand as a reminder of America’s commitment to freedom and democracy, the medal and the story behind it largely disappeared from popular memory.In 2007, the office of Representative Todd Tiahrt of Kansas contacted the Office of the Historian on behalf of a former Olympian asking about the status of the 1980 medal and its authorizing legislation. After discovering that the medal had, for decades, been omitted from the list of Congressional Gold Medals, historians added the 1980 medal alongside the nearly 200 other gold medals America’s lawmakers have awarded since 1776. Why the medal had been overlooked remains a mystery, but it is likely that earlier generations of recordkeepers saw that the 1980 medal was gold-plated and did not include it with the other solid gold medals.In December 2007, Representative Tiahrt inserted into the Congressional Record the names of 480 Olympic athletes awarded the gold medal in 1980. “This group has waited a long time for this recognition, and I believe that the individual athletes that made up this team deserve to be recognized,” he said.“As we all know, these games occur only once every 4 years,” Representative Tiahrt observed. “The investment of time and effort required of an Olympic caliber athlete is extraordinary. Because of this investment, many of these athletes sacrificed a once in a lifetime dream of competing on this world stage.” But, he pointed out, the sacrifice was not made in vain. “The 1980 Summer U.S. Olympic Team is now officially recognized as a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal.”Sources: Congressional Record, House, 74th Cong., 1st sess. (19 August 1935): 13747–13749; Congressional Record, House, 74th Cong., 2nd sess. (3 June 1936): 8991–8992; Congressional Record, House, 96th Cong., 2nd sess. (13 June 1980): 14656; Congressional Record, House, 96th Cong., 2nd sess. (30 June 1980): 17734–17736; Congressional Record, House, Extension of Remarks, 110th Cong., 1st sess. (13 December 2007): HE2579; A Concurrent Resolution Urging the United States Olympic Committee, the International Olympic Committee, and the Olympic Committees of Other Countries to Take Certain Actions with Respect to the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, in Accordance with the Requests of the President, H. Con. Res. 249, 96th Cong. (1980); An Act to Authorize the President of the United States to Present on Behalf of Congress A Specially Struck Gold-Plated Medal to the United States Summer Olympic Team of 1980, Public Law 96-306, 94 Stat. 937; Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. Participation in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, 96th Cong., 2nd sess. (1980); New York Times, March 9, 1980; U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. Response, 1978–1980,” accessed 18 July 2024, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/soviet-invasion-afghanistan; U.S. Department of State, archive, “The Olympic Boycott, 1980,” accessed 18 July 2024, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/qfp/104481.htm.
Warren J. Blumenfeld on Andrew J. McKevitt’s *Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America* | Society for US Intellectual History
I sat glued to the TV screen on the morning of April 9, 2024, carrying a full array of emotions, from intense anger to overwhelming sorrow and grief watching the victim impact statements from parents and siblings of four Michigan Oxford High School students gunned down by another student, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, on November 30,
Cardinal Spellman’s Cold War Patriotism | Society for US Intellectual History
In the first full narrative chapter of Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial, Michelle Nickerson sets up the contextual train of teaching and ideas in the United States, Catholic and otherwise, that allowed the “Camden 28” to come into being. Her goal is to explain how a Catholic Left,
Founding the Congressional Hispanic Conference | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
“A person’s political agenda is not predisposed based on their skin color. I’m here to prove it,” declared Henry Bonilla, a Mexican-American Republican who represented San Antonio, Texas, in the House, in 2003. Bonilla was speaking for himself. But he was also defending Miguel Estrada, a Honduras-born attorney who had been nominated by Republican President George W. Bush to a seat on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, an assignment that many viewed as a steppingstone to the U.S. Supreme Court. For the better part of two years, Estrada’s nomination had languished amid fierce opposition from Senate Democrats. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which provided legislative support to lawmakers and was composed primarily of congressional Democrats in the House, had come out against Estrada as well, infuriating Hispanic Republicans in Congress. Bonilla had had enough. Given the stakes of Estrada’s nomination, it was “time for the Hispanics of America to have a unbiased voice," Bonilla announced.Strengthened by their growing numbers and frustrated by the opposition to Estrada—a man whom they admired and whose politics and background they shared—Hispanic Republicans in Congress formed the Congressional Hispanic Conference in 2003. In so doing, they created an organization that would serve as a center of Hispanic power within the GOP Conference and would compete with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a variety of liberal organizations to best express the hopes and dreams of America’s largest minority population.Leaving the Hispanic CaucusSince its founding in 1976, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had been the organized voice of Latino Members of Congress. An overwhelming majority of those members belonged to the Democratic Party, and the posture of the caucus therefore tended to reflect Democratic priorities. While Republicans, including Henry Bonilla who had first been elected in 1992, had in the past joined the group, the calculus for their participation changed after the GOP regained control of the House for the first time in 40 years heading into the 104th Congress (1995–1997). With the majority change in 1995, Republicans suddenly had control over the legislative agenda. Moreover, the new rules package adopted by the House restricted the role of the Hispanic Caucus in the legislative process and cut funding for staff. While the caucus reconstituted itself without public financial support, its path forward had become more complicated.In 1997, two Cuban-American lawmakers from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, resigned from the caucus after caucus chair Xavier Becerra of California visited Cuba and had an audience with Fidel Castro. The legislators criticized Becerra for not imploring Castro to hold free elections or meeting with political dissidents. At the time, Diaz-Balart had called it “mind-boggling” that his colleagues would fail “to support even the most elemental freedoms for these oppressed people” in Cuba. Within a year, Henry Bonilla also left the caucus, and not a single Republican remained in the group.A Critical Mass of LawmakersIn 2003, almost three decades after the Hispanic Caucus’s founding and six years after the Cuba incident, the fight over Estrada’s nomination to the bench began a new chapter for Hispanic representation on Capitol Hill. In March that year, Bonilla announced the advent of the new Congressional Hispanic Conference and criticized the Hispanic Caucus as an “arm of the extreme left of the Democratic Party” and “the attack dogs of the left.” Ros-Lehtinen was less confrontational, describing the Estrada nomination as having revealed the need to establish another Hispanic group “that represented another more moderate position.”Faced with the creation of a rival organization, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus downplayed the rift. Representative Ciro D. Rodriguez, a Texas Democrat, noted that the two groups were “actually on the same page on a lot of issues.” But in the eyes the Hispanic Conference’s first executive director, the Hispanic Caucus had become “the establishment” and it was up to the conference to offer a new approach.While the Estrada nomination fight was critical to the formation of the conference in 2003, other factors also contributed to the decision. Crucial was the redistricting process that followed the 2000 Census. Population growth in Florida led to the creation of a new seat adjacent to Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s Miami district. In 2002, Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln’s brother, won election in the new Florida district, and Devin Nunes, a Portuguese-American Representative from California, won a seat from the Central Valley, increasing the number of Hispanic Republicans in Congress to six. By comparison, 20 Hispanic Democrats served in the 108th Congress (2003–2005).Defining Hispanic RepublicanismFor members of the new conference, the Estrada nomination fight not only furnished the legislators with a rationale for organizing, it helped them to explain what it meant to be a Hispanic Republican. Estrada’s resume included an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a law degree from Harvard. He later clerked for a Supreme Court Justice and then, as an attorney with the Office of the Solicitor General, had argued before the highest court in the land. “So many of us who are the sons and daughters of immigrants,” explained the founders in a Wall Street Journal op-ed marking their group’s debut, saw in Estrada’s hard work building a career all that was right about the country, the realization of the “American promise” to its newcomers.The Hispanic Conference also did not shy away from promoting Estrada as a candidate who would diversify the federal bench, in both his cultural and ideological background. Opposition to his nomination, the founders wrote, reflected “a pervasive and troubling trend whereby the advancement of minorities is only applauded when it reinforces liberal politics.”The rise of the Hispanic Conference and its work on behalf of Estrada’s nomination gave the House rare influence over judicial nominations, an issue ordinarily understood as the domain of the Senate which has the constitutional power to advise and consent on presidential appointments. Per a request from Senate GOP leadership, Mario Diaz-Balart, the chief organizer and “engine” of the conference, championed Estrada’s confirmation cause in the House and managed debate on the House Floor during which GOP Representatives publicly backed Estrada. Diaz-Balart also publicized letters in which he criticized Democratic Senators, calling their effort to stymie a confirmation vote “‘not only an injustice to the courts, but also to the advancement of well-qualified Hispanics.’” Ros-Lehtinen, too, pressured Florida’s U.S. Senators, both Democrats, to end the filibuster against Estrada.On March 4, 2003, Diaz-Balart led a “rally” on the Senate side of the Capitol, delivering remarks and serving as interlocutor for Republican Senators who spoke on behalf of Estrada. The Senators echoed his charge that congressional Democrats were “us[ing] race to try to disqualify Mr. Estrada.” The conference members kept up the campaign for months, but it ultimately proved unsuccessful. When the Bush administration withdrew Estrada’s nomination, Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen were the only Members of the House to join Senate leaders in a press conference to protest the defeat. First in English and then in Spanish, the Miami lawmakers excoriated the opposition for its “partisan” derailment of Estrada’s confirmation. Ros-Lehtinen called it “discriminación total,” all because of Estrada’s conservative beliefs. Diaz-Balart described it in terms apropos of a death in one’s family, saying that when the Senate refused to confirm Estrada, “We lost a brilliant young Hispanic.” “Nosotros, los Hispanos, nunca lo podremos olvidar,” (“We, the Hispanics, will never forget it”) he added. The Estrada nomination had cemented a sense of collective purpose, and given Hispanic Republicans in Congress a chance to develop ways of thinking and communicating what made them unique and important to their party and the nation.Building a New OrganizationAt the organizational level, Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior member of the new conference, was elected chairperson, and Henry Bonilla was named vice chair. Lawmakers tasked Mario Diaz-Balart’s chief of staff, Omar Franco, with hiring the conference’s first executive director. The members wanted to reach beyond the conference’s Cuban-American nucleus to enlist someone of Mexican-American descent for the position. Because the successful applicant still had to demonstrate an ability to represent the diverse constituency, candidates interviewed with each Member office in the conference. In the summer of 2003, the conference hired Octavio Hinojosa Mier, the son of Mexican immigrants who had been raised in the established Mexican-American community of Hutchinson, Kansas, and who later worked for U.S. Representative Jerry Moran. Hinojosa had come of age during the Ronald Reagan presidency, his worldview shaped by the Cold War. But it was Republicans’ embrace of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, and the promise of prosperity for Mexico, that led him to political activism. Hinojosa worked out of a cubicle in Mario Diaz-Balart’s office, a staff of one who learned to rely on the Member’s staff for support, particularly in the legislative process.Early on, the conference worked to build a set of procedures for operating. It held monthly policy meetings, typically in Ros-Lehtinen’s office, that lasted about 30 minutes. Hinojosa would present on a topic and encourage Members and their staffs to adopt a common position on the issue. The conference at times struggled to find a “specific wording” that Members could agree upon. Hinojosa’s successor as executive director, Mario H. Lopez, a former aide in the House Republican Conference office of Representative J.C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma, learned that one of the best ways to create a common “statement” on any given matter was to aggregate quotes from individual lawmakers on the issue, and release them under the same umbrella. This allowed the conference to act collectively, while still preserving the prerogatives of individual Members and their staffs to communicate with their constituents directly.Leading House Republicans at the time largely welcomed the Hispanic Conference. In the mid-1990s, Republican leadership under Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia had taken an adversarial stance toward legislative service organizations such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. By the early 2000s, recalled Hinojosa, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and other GOP leaders remained open to the group’s activities, which he attributed to a growing appreciation that Republicans could succeed among Hispanic voters. Not unrelated, the Congressional Hispanic Conference formed at a time when the Republican Party under President Bush was engaged heavily in Hispanic outreach, the Estrada nomination being only one highly visible aspect.The conference also enlisted “associate” members from the House’s rank-and-file who were not themselves Hispanic. The conference’s first two executive directors would comb census records and invite Republicans whose represented districts that had substantial Hispanic populations, and who thus had what Lopez called the “very logical incentive” to join the group.Often, Mario Diaz-Balart would follow up on these invitations, whether in the Republican Cloakroom off the House Floor or elsewhere. Such appeals had additional credibility with some Members because Diaz-Balart belonged to the Republican Study Committee, then the organization of the most conservative House Republicans. By 2006, associate members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference included Bob Beauprez of Colorado, Christopher B. Cannon of Utah, Randy Neugebauer of Texas, and Gerald C. “Jerry” Weller of Illinois.With the formation of the conference in the early 2000s, Hispanic institutional organization in Congress was becoming more complex and more dynamic. But many questions remained. How the Hispanic Conference might relate to a Republican Party itself undergoing changes as the Bush presidency came to a close was unclear. And how the new group might yet work with the Hispanic Caucus remained to be seen. It had been “a troubled divorce,” in the words of Ros-Lehtinen, but there was potential for productive relations between the two, hope in at last arriving, she said, at “a very amiable spot where we agree to disagree.”Sources: Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to be Chief Justice of the United States, 109th Cong., 1st sess. (2005); Congressional Staff Directory, Fall 2006 (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006); “Octavio Hinojosa Mier Oral History Interview,” Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives (29 August 2023); Mario H. Lopez, email message to the Office of the Historian, September 23, 2024; Austin American Statesman, 21 March 2003; Gannet News Service, 19 March 2003; New York Times, 15 March 2003; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 February 1997; San Antonio Express-News, 19 March 2003; South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 27 April 2003; St. Petersburg Times, 25 February 2003; Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2003; Hispanic Business 26 (2004); Kathryn Jean Lopez, “Power Struggle,” Hispanic 16, no. 7/8 (July/August 2003); “America and the Courts,” press conference, 4 March 2003, C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?175408-1/america-courts; “Estrada Withdrawal Reaction,” press conference, 4 September 2003, C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?178038-1/estrada-withdrawal-reaction; Sarah J. Eckman, “Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) and Informal Member Groups: Their Purpose and Activities, History, and Formation,” Report R40683, 21 March, 2023, Congressional Research Service: 14–15.