[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1968]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO TOM KERR

                                 ______


                         HON. WILLIAM J. COYNE

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 18, 1995

  Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a man who has 
been a committed defender of personal freedom and constitutional 
rights. This dedicated individual, Mr. Tom Kerr, has been an 
influential leader of the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of the American 
Civil Liberties Union for almost 40 years.
  Tom Kerr's many years of service will be celebrated in Pittsburgh at 
a dinner gala on October 25, 1995. He will be honored for his service 
to the community, for his personal sacrifice and commitment, and for 
his devotion to civil liberties.
  Mr. Kerr helped revive the Pittsburgh chapter of the ACLU in 1956 and 
served for years as the leader of this organization. From 1964 to 1984, 
he chaired the Pennsylvania ACLU affiliate and served on the national 
board of the ACLU. Mr. Kerr once gave up a partnership in a promising 
private practice rather than give in to pressure from his colleagues to 
abandon his work with the ACLU. Since then, he has taught at the 
Duquesne University School of Law and the Graduate School of Industrial 
Administration of Carnegie Mellon University while working actively for 
the ACLU. He has also served on the Pittsburgh Human Relations 
Commission and the Pittsburgh public employees' Personnel Appeals 
Board. He is still active today as an associate professor at CMU and as 
a member of the board of the ACLU's Pittsburgh chapter and the ACLU's 
National Advisory Council.
  Mr. Kerr's legal activities on behalf of the ACLU has included cases 
in support of the civil rights movement, affirmative action, 
conscientious objectors resisting conscription during the Vietnam war, 
and union protestors. He has worked tirelessly to challenge the 
legality of racial- and gender-based discrimination, to guarantee the 
separation of church and state, and to defend individuals' rights to 
equal protection and individual privacy. In short, he has been active 
in many, if not all, of the most contentious and important 
constitutional issues of our times. More importantly, he has been on 
the right side of those issues.
  I join the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of the ACLU in celebrating Tom 
Kerr's commitment to the defense of our precious civil liberties, and 
in thanking him for his many years of dedicated service to this cause 
and to the ACLU.

                          ____________________