[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 29, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                TRIBUTE TO D.C. COMMISSIONER JOHN DUNCAN

                                 ______


                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 29, 1994

  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to 
quote from the June 22, 1994, Washington Post obituary honoring Mr. 
John Duncan.

       John B. Duncan, 84, who as a member of Washington's last 
     three-member board of commissioners helped broaden the ranks 
     of African-Americans in the District government, died of 
     kidney failure June 21 at his home in Alexandria.
       He had been D.C. recorder of deeds for nine years and a 
     city worker for 28 years when he was tapped by President 
     Kennedy in 1961 to join the board governing the city's 
     affairs. He was the District's first black commissioner and 
     served until 1967, when, after a century, the single mayor-
     commissioner was reinstated and Walter E. Washington was 
     appointed.
       When Mr. Duncan became commissioner, many in the largely 
     black city were pressing for self-rule, and Congress was 
     resisting. The District's politics had been caught up in the 
     growing militancy of African-Americans who were younger and 
     less patient than the civil rights leaders of Mr. Duncan's 
     generation.
       Dismissing criticism from black-power advocates that he had 
     not moved fast enough, Mr. Duncan observed in 1967: ``Every 
     generation finds that it is able to be more vocal than its 
     fathers were. This is another generation. It strikes. It 
     marches. It boycotts. Each generation gets closer to what 
     we're all after.''
       Mr. Duncan made it his mission to expand the opportunities 
     of black Washingtonians. The city bureaucracy he helped 
     oversee had only four African-American board and council 
     members when he took office. When he left, there were 143.
       The appointments of corporation counsel, director of 
     corrections and industrial safety director went to African-
     Americans, as did many clerical jobs previously held by 
     whites. Mr. Duncan and board president Walter N. Tobiriner 
     worked to enact open occupancy and fair employment ordinances 
     that lowered barriers in the city.
       As the commissioner with primary responsibility for the 
     city's health, licensing, insurance and social welfare 
     programs, Mr. Duncan pressed for fair housing in the face of 
     ``congressional threat and abuse,'' The Washington Post noted 
     at the end of his first term.
       But he also had gone to great lengths to avoid controversy, 
     the newspaper said in an editorial. With his reputation for 
     quiet and responsible conservatism now established, it said, 
     ``Mr. Duncan will perhaps be able to respond more actively to 
     the city's aching need for leadership, particularly in the 
     social services.''
       By the time Mr. Duncan left office, the city still had done 
     little to dovetail its fragmented social services or to 
     coordinate the efforts of the health and welfare departments. 
     He had, however, helped persuade Congress to accept a 
     compromise that gave the city a form of aid to children of 
     the unemployed, getting those children on the welfare rolls 
     for the first time.
       Mr. Duncan and his fellow commissioners also lobbied 
     Congress to replace them with a single executive and a nine-
     member council. The result in 1967 was the appointment by 
     President Johnson of Washington as the city's first black 
     mayor. Washington was elected mayor in 1974, along with the 
     first district council.
       John Bonner Duncan, one of seven siblings in a family of 
     educators, was born in Springfield, Ky., was born in 
     Salisbury, N.C. As a young man growing up in the repression 
     of the South, the far-distant District of Columbia seemed 
     like ``the promised land,'' he recalled last year. But after 
     arriving in Washington in 1930 to attend Howard University, 
     he found that ``this so-called dreamland had separate schools 
     and signs segregating blacks from whites,'' and that ``cafes 
     permitted Negroes to handle food, to sell food, but they 
     could not buy food.''
       Mr. Duncan graduated from Howard University and from Terrel 
     Law School. He was an Interior Department messenger before 
     becoming a lawyer with the federal government. He worked for 
     the Bituminous Coal Commission, the Office of Price 
     Administration and federal housing agencies.
       During the 1940s, he held leadership roles in the Benning 
     Heights Civic Association, the D.C. Federation of Civil 
     Associations, the NAACP, the Washington Urban League and the 
     Washington Federation of Churches. Duncan also served on the 
     boards of such groups as the Community Chest, the Federal 
     City Council, the United Negro College Fund and the National 
     Conference of Christians and Jews.
       After he left office, Mr. Duncan was assistant for urban 
     relations to the secretary of the interior until 1969 and 
     then worked two more decades as a consultant in housing 
     development, public relations and equal opportunity.
       He also headed organizations that included the Washington 
     Home Rule Committee and the Voice of Informed Community 
     Expression, a group formed after the 1968 riots. He served on 
     a congressional commission that studied the efficiency of the 
     city government.
       Mr. Duncan was a trustee of John Wesley AME Zion Church in 
     Washington and president of DePreist Fifteen, a men's 
     organization.
       His wife, Edith West Duncan, died in 1966. Survivors 
     include his wife of 24 years, Dolores Duncan of Alexandria; 
     two children from his first marriage, Dr. Joan West Duncan of 
     Norwalk, Conn., and John B. Duncan Jr. of Casitas Springs, 
     Calif.; a son from his second marriage, Jay Berry Duncan of 
     Alexandria; and eight grandchildren.

                          ____________________