[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 48 (Thursday, April 28, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
           A CHAMPION OF CIVIL LIBERTIES LAYS DOWN HIS LANCE

                                 ______


                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 28, 1994

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to my dear friend and 
colleague Representative Don Edwards. During his 32 years on Capitol 
Hill, Congressman Edwards has fought relentlessly for civil and 
constitutional rights for all Americans. His tireless struggle to rid 
our country of legalized racial discrimination is clear from his voting 
record in Congress.
  He voted for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965. His moral commitment never weakened. During the 
Reagan-Bush years Representative Edwards assembled bipartisan 
majorities to pass the Fair Housing Amendment in 1988 and the Civil 
Rights Act of 1991.
  I served on the Judiciary Committee with Congressman Edwards during 
the Watergate investigations. He proved himself as a great defender of 
the constitutional rights that many people take for granted. His 
accomplishments and dedication will long be remembered.
  I was surprised to hear of Representative Edwards' decision to leave 
Congress at the end of this term. I will sorely miss my colleague from 
California, but I am grateful for the privilege and will always take 
pride in having served with him.
  For the benefit of my colleagues I wish to enter the following 
article which appeared in the New York Times, Sunday, April 3, 1994.

                [From the New York Times, April 3, 1994]

                             Conversations

                            (By Robert Pear)

       Washington--``The next civil right really should be some 
     kind of civil right for livelihood,'' said Representative Don 
     Edwards, Democrat of California, the pre-eminent defender of 
     constitutional rights on Capitol Hill. Sitting in his office 
     last week, he observed that civil rights debates have become 
     more complex as the focus shifts from political to economic 
     rights.
       ``It's all very well for a black kid in Washington to have 
     free speech and not to be discriminated against in getting an 
     auto license,'' he said. ``But unless he has a livelihood, 
     unless he is qualified for a job and has grown up with strict 
     adult supervision, he is going to have a hard time making it 
     in this country.''
       For Mr. Edwards, 79, moving the concept of civil rights 
     forward into another arena in almost a habit. But while he 
     continues this intellectual and moral exercise, he will be 
     championing his concepts in less visible arenas, as he 
     retires in January after 32 years in Congress.
       In those years, a time span that stretches from John F. 
     Kennedy to Bill Clinton, he prodded his colleagues into 
     decisions that did at least as much as any Attorney General 
     to protect people against discrimination.
       ``It was almost magical in those days,'' he said of the 
     Johnson years. ``We could pass anything if we labeled it 
     civil rights. But now there's almost an avalanche of anti-
     civil rights things going on.''
       Mr. Edwards voted for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 
     1964, which banned discrimination in employment and public 
     accommodations, and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 
     ``Kennedy's assassination made a big difference,'' he said. 
     ``Lyndon Johnson emotionally asked us to do it for Jack 
     Kennedy. Johnson was just great on these issues.''
       Mr. Edwards has been chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee 
     on Civil and Constitutional Rights for more than two decades. 
     He passed up opportunities to lead other committees so he 
     could keep his position as monitor of the Federal Bureau of 
     Investigation and as field marshal in the battles over civil 
     rights.
       Mr. Edwards also turned down a seat on the House Permanent 
     Select Committee on Intelligence. ``I thought I would be 
     trapped by secrecy oaths, and it would interfere with my free 
     speech,'' he said.


                            `A Paleoliberal'

       Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, the ranking 
     Republican on Mr. Edwards' subcommittee, describes his 
     colleague as ``a paleoliberal,'' untouched by revisionism or 
     self-doubt. Yet he said he greatly respects Mr. Edwards as 
     ``someone whose principles are not malleable.''
       ``Don Edwards is one of the most thorough-going gentlemen 
     that I've encountered in Congress,'' said Mr. Hyde. ``He's 
     soft-spoken. He is passionately committed to the cause of 
     civil liberties. He is relentlessly liberal, but that's not a 
     vice. The battle for the fullest expression of civil 
     liberties is losing a general, not a foot soldier.''
       Mr. Edwards' independence can be judged from his vote in 
     February on a House resolution condemning a speech by Khalid 
     Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, who had delivered a 
     vitriolic attack on Jews, Catholics and others. By a vote of 
     361 to 34, the House denounced the speech as ``outrageous 
     hatemongering of the most vicious and vile kind.''
       Mr. Edwards agreed that the remarks were disgusting and 
     racist, but opposed the resolution. Lawmakers should counter 
     Mr. Muhammad with speeches and press conferences, he argued, 
     but Congress as an institution should not take official 
     action to condemn a particular speech. ``That's a chilling 
     precedent,'' he said. ``Will we condemn books and magazines 
     next? Offensive movies?''
       Mr. Edwards also disapproves of the campus speech codes 
     through which colleges have tried to restrict speech 
     expressing bias toward women, blacks and members of other 
     minority groups. ``I am not in favor of these arbitrary 
     codes,'' he said. ``They have civil liberties problems.'' 
     Offensive speech requires other remedies, he said, suggesting 
     that counseling and communication were better responses than 
     punishment.
       Mr. Edwards, who had not held political office before he 
     was elected to Congress in 1962, grew up in a conservative 
     Republican family. After law school, he served two years as 
     an F.B.I. agent and four years as a Navy officer. He was 
     president of a land title company before coming to 
     Washington.
       His son, Leonard P. Edwards, a judge of the Juvenile Court 
     in Santa Clara County, Calif., said his father always had a 
     commitment to civil rights. ``He was born with it,'' said 
     Judge Edwards. ``I don't think this is something that he had 
     to reflect upon. It goes to his very essence as a human 
     being. He's very proud of this country and believes that 
     diversity is one of its strengths.''
       The Congressman's district, at the southern end of San 
     Francisco Bay, includes the heart of San Jose, as well as 
     vineyards of the Santa Clara Valley. Thirty-seven percent of 
     the residents are Hispanic, but many are not registered to 
     vote. Twenty percent of the residents are Asian-Americans, 
     who vote regularly.


                            `our apartheid'

       In the Reagan and Bush years, Mr. Edwards and his allies 
     assembled large bipartisan majorities to pass civil rights 
     legislation including the Voting Rights Act extension of 
     1982, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Fair 
     Housing Amendments of 1988 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 
     which overturned eight Supreme Court decisions.
       Today, Mr. Edwards said, it is much more difficult to build 
     such bipartisan bridges. In the struggles of the 1960's, he 
     said, ``we had the advantage of a Republican Party that was 
     pro-civil rights.'' Eighty percent of House Republicans and 
     61 percent of House Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act 
     of 1964, ``a really revolutionary bill that eliminated most 
     aspects of our apartheid,'' he said.
       Recently, Mr. Edwards said, ``there definitely has been a 
     diminishing interest in resolving the separation and the 
     alienation and the discrimination against black Americans.'' 
     He agreed with civil rights lobbyists who assert that the 
     Supreme Court poses a grave threat to civil rights and civil 
     liberties. ``This Supreme Court has been hostile to civil 
     rights and to civil liberties,'' Mr. Edwards said.
       In the criminal justice system, particularly in death 
     penalty cases, he said, blacks are still struggling to gain 
     constitutional protections that whites enjoy. ``Forty percent 
     of the 3,000 people on death row are black, even though 
     blacks are only 13 percent of the population,'' Mr. Edwards 
     said. ``We have some remnants left over from the slavery 
     days,'' when the punishment for a slave killing his master 
     was much harsher than the penalty for a master killing a 
     slave.
       ``Most Americans don't understand how important it is to 
     our domestic tranquility to encourage and advocate a more 
     caring society, which is generous in its laws, its social 
     programs and general attitudes,'' Mr. Edwards said. ``Too 
     many Americans have learned in the last 10 or 15 years that 
     if you just go to church and pray, you are virtuous 
     regardless of how you treat your brothers and sisters, 
     especially the black and Hispanic ones.''

                          ____________________