[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 23, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3153-S3155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   ROBERT C. WEAVER FEDERAL BUILDING

  The bill (S. 67) to designate the headquarters building of the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, District of 
Columbia, as the ``Robert C. Weaver Federal Building,'' was considered, 
ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, read the third time, and 
passed; as follows:

                                 S. 67

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. DESIGNATION OF ROBERT C. WEAVER FEDERAL BUILDING.

       In honor of the first Secretary of Housing and Urban 
     Development, the headquarters building of the Department of 
     Housing and Urban Development located at 451 Seventh Street, 
     SW., in Washington, District of Columbia, shall be known and 
     designated as the ``Robert C. Weaver Federal Building''.
       Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, 
     or other record of the United States to the building referred 
     to in section 1 shall be deemed to be a reference to the 
     ``Robert C. Weaver Federal Building''.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Madam President, it is fitting that we have passed this 
legislation to name the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD) 
Washington, D.C. headquarters after Dr. Robert C. Weaver, adviser to 
three Presidents, national chairman of the NAACP, and the first 
African-American Cabinet Secretary.
  In 1961, President Kennedy appointed Dr. Weaver to head the Housing 
and Home Finance Agency, the precursor to the Department of Housing and 
Urban Development. In 1966, when President Johnson elevated the agency 
to Cabinet rank, he chose Dr. Weaver to head the department. Bob Weaver 
was, in Johnson's phrase, ``the man for the job.'' He thus became its 
first Secretary, and the first African-American to head a Cabinet 
agency.

[[Page S3154]]

  Dr. Weaver began his career in government service as part of 
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ``Black Cabinet,'' an informal 
advisory group promoting Federal job and educational opportunities for 
blacks. The Washington Post called this work--``the dismantling of a 
deeply entrenched system of racial segregation in America''--his 
greatest legacy. Indeed it was.
  Bob Weaver was my friend, dating back more than 40 years to our 
service together in the administration of New York Governor Averell 
Harriman. Dr. Weaver was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Housing for 
New York State in 1955, and later became State Rent Administrator with 
Cabinet rank. It was during these years, working for Governor Harriman, 
that I first met Bob; I was Assistant to the Secretary to the Governor 
and later, Acting Secretary. Our friendship and collaboration continued 
through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Later, he and I served 
together on the Pennsylvania Avenue Commission.
  Bob Weaver died in July 1997, at his home in New York City. When he 
died, America--and Washington, in particular (for he was a native 
Washingtonian)--lost one of its innovators, one of its true leaders. I 
was privileged to know him as a friend. He will be missed but properly 
memorialized, I think, if we can get this legislation to name the HUD 
building after him to President Clinton for his signature.
  I wish to thank Senators Boxer, Durbin, Graham, Hollings, Kennedy, 
Kerry, Robb, Sarbanes, and Schumer, for cosponsoring S. 67, and I wish 
to thank the majority and minority leaders for scheduling its 
expeditious passage.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my statement, a July 21, 
1997 editorial in the Washington Post, and a July 19, 1997 obituary 
from the New York Times be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From The New York Times, July 19, 1997]

         Robert C. Weaver, 89, First Black Cabinet Member, Dies

                           (By James Barron)

       Dr. Robert C. Weaver, the first Secretary of Housing and 
     Urban Development and the first black person appointed to the 
     Cabinet, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 
     89.
       Dr. Weaver was also one of the original directors of the 
     Municipal Assistance Corporation, which was formed to rescue 
     New York City from financial crisis in the 1970's.
       ``He was catalyst with the Kennedys and then with Johnson, 
     forging new initiatives in housing and education,'' said 
     Walter E. Washington, the first elected Mayor of the nation's 
     capital.
       A portly, pedagogical man who wrote four books on urban 
     affairs, Dr. Weaver had made a name for himself in the 1930's 
     and 40's as an expert behind-the-scenes strategist in the 
     civil rights movement, ``Fight hard and legally,'' he said, 
     ``and don't blow your top.''
       As a part of the ``Black Cabinet'' in the administration of 
     President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dr. Weaver was one of a 
     group of blacks who specialized in housing, education and 
     employment. After being hired as race relations advisers in 
     various Federal agencies, they pressured and persuaded the 
     White House to provide more jobs, better educational 
     opportunities and equal rights.
       Dr. Weaver began in 1933 as an aide to Interior Secretary 
     Harold L. Ickes. He later served as a special assistant in 
     the housing division of the Works Progress Administration, 
     the National Defense Advisory Commission, the War Production 
     Board and the War Manpower Commission.
       Shortly before the 1940 election, he devised a strategy 
     that defused anger among blacks about Stephen T. Early, 
     President Roosevelt's press secretary.
       Arriving at Pennsylvania Station in New York, Early lost 
     his temper when a line of police officers blocked his way. 
     Early knocked one of the officers, who happened to be black, 
     to the ground. As word of the incident spread, a White House 
     adviser put through a telephone call to Dr. Weaver in 
     Washington.
       The aide, worried that the incident would cost Roosevelt 
     the black vote, told Dr. Weaver to find the other black 
     advisers and prepare a speech that would appeal to blacks for 
     the President to deliver the following week.
       Dr. Weaver said he doubted that he could find anyone in the 
     middle of the night, even though most of the others in the 
     ``Black Cabinet'' had been playing poker in his basement when 
     the phone rang. ``And anyway,'' he said, ``I don't think a 
     mere speech will do it. What we need right now is something 
     so dramatic that it will make the Negro voters forget all 
     about Steve Early and the Negro cop too.''
       Within 48 hours, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. was the first black 
     general in the Army; William H. Hastie was the first black 
     civilian aide to the Secretary of War, and Campbell C. 
     Johnson was the first high-ranking black aide to the head of 
     the Selective Service.
       Robert Clifton Weaver was born on Dec. 29, 1907, in 
     Washington. His father was a postal worker and his mother--
     who he said influenced his intellectual development--was the 
     daughter of the first black person to graduate from Harvard 
     with a degree in dentistry. When Dr. Weaver joined the 
     Kennedy Administration, whose Harvard connections extended to 
     the occupant of the Oval Office, he held more Harvard 
     degrees--three, including a doctorate in economics--than 
     anyone else in the administration's upper ranks.
       In 1960, after serving as the New York State Rent 
     Commissioner, Dr. Weaver became the national chairman of the 
     National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 
     and President Kennedy sought Dr. Weaver's advice on civil 
     rights. The following year, the President appointed him 
     administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, a loose 
     combination of agencies that included the bureaucratic 
     components of what would eventually become H.U.D., including 
     the Federal Housing Administration to spur construction, the 
     Urban Renewal Administration to oversee slum clearance and 
     the Federal National Mortgage Association to line up money 
     for new housing.
       President Kennedy tried to have the agency raised to 
     Cabinet rank, but Congress balked. Southerners led an attack 
     against the appointment of a black to the Cabinet, and there 
     were charges that Dr. Weaver was an extremist. Kennedy 
     abandoned the idea of creating an urban affairs department.
       Five years later, when President Johnson revived the idea 
     and pushed it through Congress, Senators who had voted 
     against Dr. Weaver the first time around voted for him.
       Past Federal housing programs had largely dealt with 
     bricks-and-mortar policies. Dr. Weaver said Washington needed 
     to take a more philosophical approach. ``Creative federalism 
     stresses local initiative, local solutions to local 
     problems,'' he said.
       But, he added, ``where the obvious needs for action to meet 
     an urban problem are not being fulfilled, the Federal 
     government has a responsibility at least to generate a 
     thorough awareness of the problem.''
       Dr. Weaver, who said that ``you cannot have physical 
     renewal without human renewal,'' pushed for better-looking 
     public housing by offering awards for design. He also 
     increased the amount of money for small businesses displaced 
     by urban renewal and revived the long-dormant idea of Federal 
     rent subsidies for the elderly.
       Later in his life, he was a professor of urban affairs at 
     Hunter College, was a member of the Visiting Committee at the 
     School of Urban and Public Affairs at Carnegie-Mellon 
     University and held visiting professorships at Columbia 
     Teachers' College and the New York University School of 
     Education. He also served as a consultant to the Ford 
     Foundation and was the president of Baruch College in 
     Manhattan in 1969.
       His wife, Ella, died in 1991. Their son, Robert Jr., died 
     in 1962.
                                  ____


               [From The Washington Post, July 21, 1997]

                            Robert C. Weaver

       Native Washingtonian Robert C. Weaver, who died on Thursday 
     in New York City at age 89, had a life of many firsts. Dr. 
     Weaver served as a college president, Cabinet secretary, 
     presidential adviser, chairman of the National Association 
     for the Advancement of Colored People and as a director of 
     the Municipal Assistance Corp., which helped save New York 
     City from financial catastrophe. But his greatest legacy may 
     be the work he did, largely out of public view, to dismantle 
     a deeply entrenched system of racial segregation in America.
       Before the landmark decade of civil rights advances in the 
     1960s, Dr. Weaver was one of a small group of African 
     American officials in the New Deal era who, as part of the 
     ``Black Cabinet'' pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt 
     to strike down racial barriers in government employment, 
     housing and education. It was a long way to come for the 
     Dunbar High School graduate who ran into racial 
     discrimination in the 1920s when he tried to join a union 
     fresh out of high school. Embittered by that experience, Bob 
     Weaver went on to Harvard (in the footsteps of his 
     grandfather, the first African American Harvard graduate in 
     dentistry) to earn his bachelor's, master's and doctorate in 
     economics. At another time in America, his university degrees 
     might have led to another career path. For Bob Weaver in 
     1932, however, those credentials--and his earlier job as a 
     college professor--made him an ``associate advisor on Negro 
     affairs'' in the U.S. Department of the Interior.
       Subsequent work as an educator, economist and national 
     housing expert--and behind-the-scenes recruitment of scores 
     of African Americans for public service--led to his 
     appointment as New York State rent administrator, making him 
     the first African American with state cabinet rank. President 
     John F. Kennedy appointed him to the highest federal post 
     ever occupied by an African American--the Housing and Home 
     Finance Agency. Despite the president's support, however, the 
     HHFA never made it to Cabinet status, because Dr. Weaver was 
     its administrator and southern legislators rebelled at the 
     thought of a black secretary. Years later President Lyndon 
     Johnson pushed through the Department of Housing and Urban 
     Development and named Robert Weaver to the presidential 
     Cabinet.

[[Page S3155]]

       For the nation, and Robert Weaver, the appointment was 
     another important first. For many other African Americans who 
     found lower barriers and increased opportunity in the last 
     third of the 20th century, Robert Weaver's legacy is lasting.

                          ____________________