[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 191 (Monday, December 4, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17927-S17928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO CHARLES GOMILLION

 Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, Charles Goode Gomillion, who passed 
away on October 4 at the age of 95, will go down in history as the 
leader of the struggle to bring political power to the black majority 
of citizens in Tuskegee, AL. The case Gomillion versus Lightfoot 
ultimately yielded a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the issue 
of redistricting. The decision in the case is also recognized by legal 
scholars as a major step forward in the dual causes of civil and voting 
rights.
  Charles Gomillion will long be remembered as a pioneer who took a 
firm stand on principle and by so doing paved the way for major 
advances in the cause of equality. His legacy is 

[[Page S 17928]]
that of social progress; his political moderation and temperament 
present an outstanding example of how to work within the constitutional 
system to effect positive change. I extend my condolences to his 
family.
  I ask that a New York Times article on the landmark remapping case be 
printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

                       [From the New York Times]

       Charles Gomillion, 95, Figure in Landmark Remap Case, Dies

                      (By Robert McG. Thomas, Jr.)

       Charles G. Gomillion, who led the fight that brought 
     political power to the black majority in Tuskegee, Ala, with 
     the assistance of a landmark Supreme Court case that bears 
     his name, died on Oct. 4 at a hospital in Montgomery, Ala. He 
     was 95 and until his recent return to Tuskegee had lived the 
     last 25 years in Washington and Roebling, N.J.
       Mr. Gomillion, a native of Edgefield, S.C., had a long and 
     distinguished career as a sociology professor and dean at 
     Tuskegee University, but it was his role as a civic leader 
     that made Charles Goode Gomillion a footnote to 
     constitutional legal history in 1960.
       As the president of the Tuskegee Civic Association, an 
     organization he had helped found in 1941, he was the lead 
     plaintiff in a suit that successfully challenged a blatant 
     act of gerrymandering designed to exclude all but a handful 
     of black voters from municipal elections.
       Alarmed by a voter registration drive led by Mr. 
     Gomillion's organization, the Alabama Legislature redrew the 
     town's boundries in 1957, leaving Tuskegee University and all 
     but a handful of black families outside the city limits.
       What had been a perfect square was now a 28-sided figure 
     that some likened to a snake and others to a sea dragon. 
     Whatever the trope, the lines had been so skillfully drawn 
     that although as many as 12 black voters remained inside a 
     city that once had 5,400 black residents, not a single one of 
     the city's 1,310 white residents had been excluded.
       Mr. Gomillion and 11 other association members filed 
     Federal suit seeking to bar Mayor Philip M. Lightfoot and 
     other city officials from enforcing the state statute on the 
     ground that it was a transparent effort to circumvent the 
     15th Amendment's voting guarantees. Two lower courts, citing 
     a 1946 Supreme Court opinion by Justice Felix Frankfurter, 
     ruled that such state action was beyond judicial review.
       When the case, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, came before the 
     Supreme Court in 1960. Justice Frankfurter, describing the 
     new configuration as ``an uncouth 28-sided figure,'' found 
     otherwise and so did all eight of his colleagues.
       Deftly distinguishing Gomillion, from the 1946 case, which 
     involved Congressional districts of unequal population in 
     Illinois, Justice Frankfurter said the Tuskegee case involved 
     ``affirmative action'' by legislature that ``singled out a 
     readily isolated segment of a racial minority for special 
     discriminatory treatment.''
       He and seven other justices said that a statute that had 
     the effect of disenfranchising black voters would be a 
     violation of the 15th Amendment. Justice Charles E. 
     Whittaker, suggesting that there would be no 
     disenfranchisement since the excluded former Tuskegee 
     residents could vote in county elections said it would 
     instead be a violation of the 14th Amendment.
       The case was sent back to District Court and the next year 
     Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. declared the statute was indeed 
     unconstitutional.
       The former city limits were restored and within years the 
     black majority has taken over both the city and county 
     governments, much to the consternation of Mr. Comillion, who 
     served for a while on the school board.
       A soft-spoken moderate who had worked quietly to enlist the 
     support of liberal-minded white allies in Tuskegee, he was 
     dismayed when a plan to integrate local schools was sabotaged 
     by Gov. George C. Wallace. The Governor ordered the schools 
     closed, creating such rancor that white residents created a 
     private school, black radicals swept Mr. Gomillion and other 
     moderates aside and in turn white families fled. Today, only 
     a handful of white families remain in Tuskegee.
       As his dream of a truly integrated community, with black 
     and white leaders working together for the common good, died, 
     Mr. Gomillion, who retired from Tuskegee in 1970, left, too.
       Although his moderate approach was rejected by a majority 
     of the black voters, at least one of the former radicals now 
     regrets it.
       ``The man was right,'' Otis Pinkard said yesterday, 
     recalling that he had once led the faction that opposed the 
     Gomillion approach, ``We should not have run all the white 
     families out of town.''
       Mr. Gomillion is survived by a daughter, Gwendolyn Chaires 
     of Roebling; three grandchildren; three great-grandchildren, 
     and one great-great-grandchild.

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