[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 30 (Tuesday, March 11, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S2128]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE 86TH BIRTHDAY OF ARNOLD ARONSON

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor to wish Arnie 
Aronson a happy 86th birthday and to commend him on his many 
achievements.
  Arnie has been working for civil rights for over 50 years. He began 
at a time when help wanted ads openly specified ``Gentile only'' or 
``Irish need not apply.'' In the early 1940's he organized a coalition 
of religious, ethnic, civil rights, social welfare, and labor 
organizations into the Chicago Council Against Religious and Racial 
Discrimination. By 1950 he was working with Roy Wilkins and many others 
to organize support for President Truman's proposed civil rights effort 
and engineered the combination of national organizations that created 
the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
  He and the leadership Conference were instrumental in the enactment 
of the first extensive Federal civil rights laws since Reconstruction, 
the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, the fundamental Voting Rights Act 
of 1965, and the pivotal Fair Housing Act of 1968. They have been 
critical to our civil rights efforts at every turn every since.
  The statement of purpose he drafted for the Leadership Conference 
says a great deal about this extraordinary man and his dedication to 
the rights of all:

       We are committed to an integrated, democratic, plural 
     society in which every individual is accorded equal rights, 
     equal opportunities and equal justice and in which every 
     group is accorded an equal opportunity to enter fully into 
     the general life of the society with mutual acceptance and 
     regard for difference.

  Arnie went on to help organize clergy, churches, and synagogues. He 
was a founding member of the National Urban Coalition and a charter 
member of Common Cause. In the last 10 years, while well in his 70's, 
he assumed the presidency of the Leadership Conference Education Fund 
and helped invigorate its educational and public service activities.
  While he gave leadership and inspiration to the country he never 
forgot his family. I know the influence he had on his niece and nephew, 
Jenette and Si Kahn.
  Their lives were changed as were ours. I wish him a happy birthday.

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