[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 150 (Tuesday, December 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: December 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING THE LATE JUDGE FRANK BATTISTI OF CLEVELAND
______
HON. LOUIS STOKES
of ohio
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, December 20, 1994
Mr. STOKES. Mr. Speaker, on October 19, 1994, the Cleveland community
suffered the loss of a legal giant. I rise today to honor the late U.S.
District Court Judge Frank J. Battisti, who passed away on that date at
the age of 72.
Judge Frank Battisti was the lifelong jurist, both in and out of the
courtroom. His devotion to law carried him from Youngstown to Harvard
Law School, and eventually to an appointment on the U.S. district court
in Cleveland by President John F. Kennedy. At the age of 39, he was the
youngest Federal judge in the country.
Judge Battisti's legal career was driven by his head and fueled by
his heart. He was a respected, and sometimes feared, judge who felt a
passion for the court that he was able to translate through his
decisions. Judge Battisti clearly understood the responsibility of his
position, and the weight of fairness and jurisprudence. He considered
how the law would affect people, not just how a decision would fit
neatly into legal theory. In short, Judge Frank Battisti had the human
touch.
Mr. Speaker, Judge Battisti never backed down from controversial
cases. From the acquittal of the Ohio National Guardsmen after the Kent
State shootings to a plan to desegregate public housing, he found
answers to very tough problems in very troubled times. His unblinking
eye on social and racial injustice helped him focus on the legal
injustice he saw in his courtroom.
His human touch never shone brighter, and the criticism never roared
louder, than after his controversial and historic decision to
desegregate Cleveland's school district in Reed against Rhodes. Judge
Battisti simply believed that children, regardless of race, religion,
or background, had an equal right to an equal education in the
Cleveland public school system. His maverick stand clearly had the
children's interest at heart, and he never wavered in the firestorm of
protest that followed Reed against Rhodes. Nearly two decades later, it
still remains to be seen whether Reed against Rhodes was the right
answer, but the underlying principle Judge Battisti defended in that
decision showed his remarkable courage and determination.
Mr. Speaker, as a former practicing attorney in Cleveland, I had the
utmost respect and admiration for Judge Battisti. The passing of Frank
Battisti is a loss to the legal community, a loss to Cleveland, and a
loss to the never-ending quest for equality, fairness, and justice. He
did not simply sit on the bench, he embodied law. He was every bit a
judge, in every sense of the word.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that an editorial from the Cleveland Plain Dealer
newspaper that pays tribute to Judge Battisti be entered into the
Record for my colleagues to read. I also ask that my colleagues join me
in recognizing the late Judge Frank Battisti.
[From the Plain Dealer, Oct. 20, 1994]
Judge Frank J. Battisti
Some admired him. Some reviled him. Few would deny the
powerful impact U.S. District Judge Frank J. Battisti, who
died yesterday at age 72, had on Cleveland.
On his name and on his most famous ruling--which found that
Cleveland public schools had violated the law by practicing
racial segregation--countless candidates premised their
campaigns for public office. In his name and in the name of
his most famous ruling, tens of thousands of black
schoolchildren learned one of the most important lessons of
their lives: that the Constitution's protections extended to
them. To understand Battisti is to gain greater knowledge
about a vital, unfinished chapter of Cleveland history and
one of its central characters.
By 1976, when Battisti issued his finding against the
school district, black children in Cleveland already had
learned about meanness, hatred and prejudice. The U.S.
Supreme Court had decided in the 1954 case of Brown vs. Board
of Education that state laws allowing racially segregated
schools violated the constitutional right to equal
protection.
Many big-city school districts began addressing racial
patterns soon after that landmark decision. Cleveland was not
among them: Officials continued practices that deliberately
separated black and white students. In fact, even after a
class action was filed in U.S. District Court in 1973, the
black school board president and the white superintendent
fought against disassembling ``black'' schools.
The Cleveland and Boston school districts reacted with the
most extreme defiance to court desegregation orders, said
Gary Orfield, a professor of education and social policy and
the head of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation.
The rancor did not stop after the ruling. Battisti's
comprehensive order had 14 components intended to bring an
equal education to all of the city's students. One of the
provisions, reassigning students to achieve integration,
overshadowed all the rest. A single word summed it up:
busing.
When Battisti required student reassignments, he used one
of the most favored methods of the day for integrating
schools. But neither the schools nor the city were the same
after the order. Whites and blacks fled as soon as they could
afford to do so.
Busing became a lightning rod for some incumbent and
aspiring school board members who blamed it for all of
Cleveland's ills. The rest of Battisti's order, which forced
neglectful district officials to install more responsible
management and promote improved student achievement, was
forgotten by the public and cruelly ignored by a succession
of school boards and administrations.
Now, 20 years after Battisti's finding, 40 years after
Brown vs. Board of Education, Cleveland schools are
predominantly one race and nearly all the children are
getting an equally insufficient education. Schools cannot
integrate in cities with such segregated housing patterns, as
communities across the United States have learned.
Time has proven that reassigning students to integrate
schools was the wrong remedy.
But what motivated Battisti, who was appointed to the U.S.
District Court by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, is not
so clear-cut.
Friends and associates say he was a deeply religious
Catholic who felt that injustices like segregation were
morally as well as legally wrong. And so he also took on
cases in which he ordered the integration of public housing
in Cleveland and Parma.
The devout and passionate Battisti saw the federal
judgeship as a calling he felt compelled to answer and
continually act upon. In that mission, people were divided
into the good and the bad.
``Battisti believed and stood for something much larger
than the minutiae of constitutional doctrine. He possessed
the intellect to understand the sweep of history,'' said
Daniel McMullen, who recently left as the director of the
Office on School Monitoring and Community Relations, the
federal court's watchdog of the Cleveland schools'
desegregation effort.
Perhaps only deep moral convictions could have shaped that
broader vision and helped Battisti confront racism. Deep
moral convictions could have provided comfort and courage
through years of being vilified, of death threats directed at
him and his family. His life had been threatened, too, when
he acquitted eight former Ohio National Guardsmen in the 1970
killings of students at Kent State University. Battisti
likely would have been hounded still more as the question
returned to his court of whether John Demjanjuk should be
deported.
Battisti could handle harassment directed at him. But the
judge was anguished when those he cared for were the targets.
Some say Battisti was sustained by the ample ego and strong
sense of independence that led him into conflicts with his
colleagues on the federal bench. Ego and independence may
have contributed to him sticking with student reassignments
to attain integration in Cleveland schools even when it
became unpopular among blacks, the very victims of the
original discrimination.
What the public saw and read did not reflect the private
side of Frank Battisti. He was a devoted family man and a
fiercely loyal friend who used to sit around with pals at a
local furniture store and gab.
He and his wife had no children, but doted on their niece
and nephew.
He could be stoic, stern and even arrogant to those who
came before him in court. But Battisti had a good sense of
humor and never tired of telling stories, especially about
fishing. He loved fly fishing and he loved Montana, and it
was ironic that an insect bite he suffered while fly fishing
in Montana brought about the illness that killed him.
Judge Frank J. Battisti's impact on Greater Cleveland will
be debated for as long as it is remembered. That is
understandable.
But the man himself should also be recalled as a longtime
public servant who unflinchingly took on cases of injustice.
He should be mourned as a person who knew the value of
friends and of family--and of a fight hard-fought.