[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 23 (Monday, February 26, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E207-E208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING DR. PHILIP GAMALIEL HUBBARD

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JAMES A. LEACH

                                of iowa

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, February 26, 2001

  Mr. LEACH. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues' attention to the 
career and life story of Dr. Philip Gamaliel Hubbard, a groundbreaking 
American educator who will celebrate his 80th birthday later this week. 
Dr. Hubbard is truly an extraordinary Iowan, and his journey through 
the last eight decades of the 20th century is a story all Americans 
should know.
  Philip G. Hubbard was born in the small town of Macon in north 
central Missouri on March 4, 1921--the day that Warren Gamaliel Harding 
was inaugurated President of the United States. His parents clearly had 
big plans for him, giving him the new President's unusual middle name 
for his own. His father died when he was only 18 days old, and four 
years later his mother gave up a teaching career to move 140 miles 
north to Des Moines, where her children would have the opportunity to 
attend Iowa's unsegregated schools.
  Phil graduated from Des Moines' North High School and enrolled in the 
University of Iowa's College of Engineering in 1940, buttressed by a 
$252 savings account earned from shining shoes. Since African Americans 
were not permitted to live in university housing at the time, he first 
boarded in a private home with the relatives of Lulu Johnson, the first 
African American woman to earn a Ph.D at an American university, and 
then in the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity house. In 1943, after pawning 
his great uncle's gold watch to buy a wedding suit and a ring, Phil 
married his fiancee, Wynonna Marie Griffin, and eight days later 
reported for active duty in the Army.
  Returning to the university at the end of the war, Phil finished his 
undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and his doctorate in 
hydraulics. He was appointed an associate professor in 1956 and a full 
professor in 1959, meritoriously triumphing over an unacknowledged, 
hurtful and short-sighted tradition to become the first African 
American tenured professor in the university's history. Teaching and 
research in one of the nation's premier research institutes occupied 
his next several years, although he combined scholarship with a quiet 
but determined social activism, pushing Iowa City to adopt one of the 
nation's first fair housing ordinances and encouraging Iowa's 
congressional representatives to support the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

[[Page E208]]

  His effective blending of academic life with his work in human and 
civil rights led to his 1965 appointment as dean of academic affairs. 
Dr. Hubbard became vice president of the university in 1972, a position 
in which he gave distinguished service until his retirement in 1991.
  Dr. Hubbard's quarter century at the center of university 
administration was a period of dramatic social change in the 
university, in the State of Iowa, and in the larger world. The theme 
that runs through his career as an administrator is his steadfast 
commitment to expanding human rights on and off campus. Working with 
university presidents Howard Bowen, Willard ``Sandy'' Boyd, James O. 
Freedman, and Hunter Rawlings III over more than twenty-five years, Dr. 
Hubbard succeeded in fully opening the resources of the University of 
Iowa to students from all ethnic backgrounds and to both genders. He 
accorded new respect for the opinions of students, creatively developed 
educational opportunity programs and scholarships for low-income and 
minority students, and helped to institute affirmative action at all 
levels of the university.
  The University of Iowa's reputation as a welcoming place where all 
people may secure a quality education is in large part a result of the 
vision and hard work of Philip G. Hubbard. Dr. Hubbard's place in Iowa 
history books is ensured by his service as the University of Iowa's 
first African American professor, dean and vice president. His real 
place in Iowa history, however, is guaranteed by two far more 
significant things: his role in opening the university to the kind of 
board diversity that reflects the best in American values and deeply 
enriches the educational experience, and the powerful effect he has had 
on the hearts of those given the privilege of crossing his path.
  The university, the State of Iowa and the world are better for the 
contributions of this truly exemplary American.

                          ____________________