In five days filled with policy discussions, panels, parties, and celebrity sightings, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) 55th Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) not only celebrated five decades of work, but offered several calls to action with one clear goal: to rise.
“There is no mea culpa coming from America. We are witnessing and have witnessed a lack of accountability on a biblical scale,” said actor Viola Davis during the ALC’s Phoenix Awards Dinner on Sept. 19. “Sometimes, in the words of Octavia Butler, in order for it to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix must burn.”
From Sept. 16-20, people from across the nation gathered at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Northwest D.C. under the theme “Rooted, Ready and Rising,” as the CBCF marked 50 years and provided a platform to look toward the future. Politicians, civil rights leaders, authors, entrepreneurs, experts across industries and performers like Davis all offered a charge to fight against federal powers working to erase African American history, eliminate civil rights and threaten America’s democracy overall.
“At the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Foundation, we have been doing work for 50 years to provide resources and information to empower communities,” said Nicole Austin-Hillery, CBCF president and CEO, during the Phoenix Awards. “We want to make sure we’re providing data, and the hard facts and evidence that our representatives and senators need to fight those who would turn back the hands of time and bring back the chains of the past.”
Through policy work and supplying legislators with figures and details, Austin-Hillery said the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) — rooted in 56 years of history — can be ready to tackle current challenges and rise like the sun toward a more just nation for African Americans.
“They will have the tools they need to to fight those who would see us erased,” she continued, “and who would see our power destroyed.”
Throughout the conference and across forums, panels and receptions, speakers and attendees alike emphasized that it takes collective cooperation to effect change. That’s why Angel Livas and her fiancé Yusef Henriques, who are based in the DMV area, made it a point to attend conference programming this year.
“My fiancé and I were having a conversation coming in. We were like, with all these amazing Black people, what could happen if we all gather together? We could do some of the things that people say are impossible,” said Livas, founder and CEO of ALIVE Podcast Network. “But it’s going to take us to have the same level of understanding and desire for a better tomorrow, so that we can be ready, so we can all rise together.”
Henriques, founder and CEO of IndyGeneUS Bio, sees participation in the conference as one of the ways he can network to collaborate with others on ways to improve opportunities for Black people across the diaspora. Through IndyGeneUS Bio, Henriques works to bridge the gap in Black and brown communities around our genome data, which he said disproportionately excludes people of color in testing and screenings.
“When I come here… it’s not a, come hang out and party thing,” he said during the Sept. 19 awards dinner, which works to raise funds for the foundation’s programming, such as the CBCF Leadership Institute. “For me, it’s really to get in front of the leaders and preach what I’ve been taught and what I could do to help our community and that’s around genomics and how we help sustain given the big cuts that are coming around health care that are affecting our community.”
The conference was a way for people to come together in the name of empowering Black communities and save democracy, all the while leaving with a collective mission.
“It’s up to us to see to it that this nation survives, that it thrives, that peace on earth, good will for all men, women and children prevails, and that the ideals for which our fathers and mothers have given their lives moves on and continue to pray,” said Ambassador Andrew Young, an awardee during the Phoenix Awards. “And [we must] help to save not only each other, but this entire planet.”
Leaders Emphasize the Power of the Vote Ahead of Midterms
A civil rights leader who was with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated and represented Georgia’s 5th congressional district in the House of Representatives from 1973-1977, Young received the CBCF Board Chair Award during the dinner and gala, on Sept. 19.
At 94, the former congressman and ambassador to the United Nations from 1977-1979, emphasized there has indeed been progress for the Black community and Americans overall in his time. However, he also noted he sees the federal efforts that threaten the progress he, King and countless others worked so hard to gain, encouraging the thousands attending the sold-out dinner to vote in the upcoming November midterm elections and beyond.
“I’m counting on the votes in the next election, the fact that we’ve come this far by faith, the fact that we’ve known what it is to be free. And we still have thrived in spite of all the adversaries, and we’re better off now than we ever thought we could be,” said Young, before honoring the Congressional Black Caucus, which had 16 members when he left the House in 1977. “Sixty-two members of the Congressional Black Caucus are in many ways — more ways than you know — responsible for progress for you and I… So keep on keeping on.”
One of the people working toward progress is Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who has proposed legislation for “National Rosa Parks Day” and the “Black History is American History Act” and is currently working to preserve the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In late May, Beatty — an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board — won a lawsuit against President Donald Trump. The lawsuit, filed in December 2025, challenged the board’s decision to rename the performing arts venue and national memorial to former President John F. Kennedy, after Trump, but the battle did not end after she was victorious.
As the ALC was gearing up, she said the president, via telephone, verbally attacked her in a Kennedy Center board meeting that ended with the decision to temporarily close the venue immediately for renovations, a decision she strongly opposes.
“When he called me Joyce, I called him Donald…. And when he said that I was dumb and that I had never done anything, I reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anyone in the room. And lastly, when he looked at me and said that I was garbage, I told him he was ignorant and I would not engage with someone ignorant,” Beatty, an honoree during the awards dinner, told the crowd, before offering a charge.
She emphasized the importance of voting in the midterms, not just because of Trump, but because of the president’s allies in the House and Senate working toward legislation that she said could negatively affect all Americans.
“If we want to take care of our public education, our health care, our housing, our neighbors, our seniors, you must go vote in this most consequential time,” she said. “And I say that as a Black woman who was muted— her microphone— by a board, who told me I couldn’t vote.”
As she wrapped her address, Beatty, the recipient of the CBC Body Award, emphasized the importance of uniting in the fight ahead.
“I have marched. I have sued the president of the United States and won. But this award is only a reflection of the collective efforts of all of us,” she said. “So, let’s stand together, let’s go fight, because everything is at stake right now.”
A Call to Rise
For Livas, the CBCF conference was the perfect opportunity to create connections to continue her efforts in tech and media, particularly working to further African American representation in those industries. She also hoped to be able to collaborate with other start-up owners, creatives and policy leaders to support their efforts.
“There’s so much that we can do while we’re present,” she told The Informer. “We can rise to the occasion. We can rise and pull somebody up behind us.”
Pulling others up, Henriques said, also helps to build the next generation of changemakers.
“We’re going to need another Viola Davis. We’re going to need another [Rep.] Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.),” he said. “We need new leaders, because the leaders that we had been dependent on for the last 50, 60 years have now come to where they need a rest.”
While members of the CBC are working in the House and Senate pushing legislation they hope will ensure progress, not only for African Americans but all U.S. citizens, Austin-Hillery said there’s more to do. That’s where the CBCF comes in, to ensure that the caucus knows the necessary issues to address, achievements to uplift, and causes to champion.
“Our leaders in this moment have been speaking up, and they have been speaking out,” Austin-Hillery said during the Phoenix Awards. “And my pledge to you… and to them, is that the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, no matter what, no matter who is working against us, that we will continue to support and sustain these leaders in the fight to protect our community and empower us and move us to the next 50 years of success.”
During the Day of Healing Prayer Breakfast, also on Sept. 19, the CBCF president said the 55th ALC— under the alliterative theme— equipped conference attendees with tools to combat discrimination and threats to civil rights.
“We know that there is nothing left to do but to go forward,” the CBCF president said, “be rooted in our legacy, be ready for this moment, and rise, rise, rise.”
Part of rising, Davis told the crowd, is for Black Americans to understand and embrace their special power.
“What is the never-ending message being teleported as its core? It’s that the very existence of our people is proof of our greatness,” she said while accepting the CBC Chair Award. “We are the Phoenix. We have the power of transformation, of renewal, of being born again. We are magic, and without our magic, this nation can never be great.”
