[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 145 (Tuesday, October 13, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2131-E2132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TRIBUTE TO TOM BRADLEY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 13, 1998

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, it was an honor to know Tom Bradley and we 
are all saddened by his death.
  People wouldn't, by any stretch of the imagination, think of Tom 
Bradley as a revolutionary. He was soft-spoken. He was a conciliator. 
He didn't often show his emotion. And, while he labored hard, he always 
did so quietly and behind the scenes. He was a gentleman in every sense 
of the word.
  No other single person, however, did more than Tom Bradley to break 
with the past and redefine the promise of the future.
  Tom's own life marked a string of firsts.
  He attended Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles--a majority white 
school--where he was the first elected black president of Poly's Boys 
League; he was the first black student indicted into Ephebians, a 
national honor society; and he was the captain of his school's track 
team.
  When Tom joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1940, there were 
100 blacks on a force of 4000. When he retired in 1961, he was a 
lieutenant, the highest rank of any black officer on the force.

[[Page E2132]]

  Tom was the first black person elected to the Los Angeles City 
Council and he was Los Angeles' first black mayor.
  The truth is I could spend the next hour reciting a list of barriers 
that Tom broke down. But recognizing that he was a pioneer only tells 
half the story. His achievements once those barriers were broken tell 
the rest of it.
  Tom served as mayor of Los Angeles for five terms during twenty years 
of tremendous economic growth, rapid change, and flourishing diversity.
  Tom was a terrific mayor and uniquely suited to those times. He was a 
consensus builder. He never practiced the politics of division. Under 
his stewardship, Los Angeles became the financial capital of the West 
Coast. It became a city that valued its multiethnic people and nurtured 
their entry into the middle class.
  Tom was the son of a sharecropper and the grandson of a slave. He 
experienced the hard existence of the least fortunate of our society in 
the early twentieth century. From those humble beginnings, he rose to 
become a leader of one of the most dynamic and prosperous cities of our 
nation. His story is uniquely American.
  I want to express my condolences to Tom's widow, Ethel, and his 
daughters, Phyllis and Lorraine, during this very sorrowful time.

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