[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 39 (Thursday, March 11, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S2610]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      IN MEMORY OF LOUISIANA STATE REPRESENTATIVE AVERY ALEXANDER

 Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, with the passing this week of 
Louisiana state Representative Avery Alexander, our nation and my state 
of Louisiana lost one of its most legendary and respected citizens. For 
most of his 88 years, Reverend Alexander gave himself selflessly and 
completely to the service of others--as a dedicated and caring 
minister, as a fearless and principled civil rights leader and as a 
tireless and thoroughly honorable public servant.
  To those who knew him, ``The Rev,'' as he was called, was a nothing 
short of a living legend and the very embodiment of the courage, 
passion and vision that characterized the civil rights movement of the 
1950s and l960s. In a day and time when standing up for your rights as 
an American meant taking your life into your hands, Avery Alexander and 
his allies took to the streets and helped transform our nation. Avery 
Alexander and his contemporaries in the civil rights movement helped 
give our nation a new birth of freedom and for that we are internally 
grateful.
  Yet long after the great civil rights marches and protests of the 
1960s and well into his ninth decade of life, Reverend Alexander was 
still as passionate and committed to the cause of human rights as he 
had always been. It wasn't that long ago--three years to be exact--that 
the people of Louisiana were treated to the familiar image of Avery 
Alexander on a ticket line in Baton Rouge, protesting changes to the 
state's affirmative action laws that he believed were unfair and 
unwise. When Avery Alexander believed in something, especially civil 
rights, he gave it his all. And he knew better than most that the civil 
rights laws of the 1960s were only a beginning, not an end, of a great 
national journey for every citizen, black, white, Hispanic or Asian.
  Whatever one might have thought about him, and however one might have 
disagreed with him, I know of no one who would have ever thought of 
questioning Avery Alexander's motives. He was a supremely principled 
man, led by conscience and an innate sense of mission and morality to 
serve always as a voice for those who had lost or had never been given 
the right to speak for themselves. If you were down and out, forgotten, 
discriminated against, despised or rejected by society, then Avery 
Alexander was your friend. I have known few people who lived up to the 
Biblical admonition to love unconditionally as well as he did. Avery 
Alexander will be missed. But he will also be long remembered for the 
ways he taught and inspired us to love, to care, to serve and, most of 
all, to look beyond skin color and gender and age and creed and to see 
that which is best, noble and God-given in each of us.
  We will all miss the ``Rev!''

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