[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.