[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 156 (Friday, October 31, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2196-E2197]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COMMEMORATION FOR WALTER EDWARD WASHINGTON
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HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON
of the district of columbia
in the house of representatives
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I arise today to inform the House of the
passing of the first Mayor of the District of Columbia in the 20th
century. Some members will remember Walter Washington's service or will
know him by reputation because no mayor here or, I dare say, elsewhere
has enjoyed more respect from this body. Mayor Washington enjoyed the
same bipartisan admiration from the two presidents during his tenure,
Lyndon Johnson, who appointed Mr. Washington the District's first mayor
in 1968 and Richard Nixon who signed the Home Rule Act in 1973 giving
the District its current home rule status, complete with an elected
mayor and city council.
The conventional wisdom is that home rule for the District depended
upon Mayor Washington's performance as appointed mayor. Few would
disagree. If home rule was past due then, more than 150 years after the
city's founding, surely full self-government, democracy and
congressional voting representation are shamefully tardy in coming to
the city's approximately 600,000 residents today. Mayor Washington, who
did more than any person to bring self-government to the District,
deserved to see its full realization before his death. Home rule
happened because people made it happen, with Walter Washington as the
leader. Freedom and democracy for an entire city is a lot to have on
one man's shoulders, but Walter Washington carried the burden easily.
His gifts were spectacularly broad--deep integrity and ability that won
him enormous professional respect as well as personal and political
skills that evoked affection from the people. That combination amounts
to the sum total of what it takes to lead. Few leaders have it all.
Walter Washington did.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that in addition to my own statement at the time
of Mayor Washington's death, I be allowed to place in the Record a
Washington Post editorial and a personal tribute from Post editorial
writer, Colbert King, who was a close friend of Walter Washington and
who served on the Senate staff when Mr. Washington was mayor.
I ask the entire House to join me in paying tribute to a man of
historic stature in the District of Columbia and in offering the
profound respect and condolences of the House of Representatives to
Mayor Washington's wife Mary and his family.
Norton Says Passing of Walter Washington Marks End of Home Rule Era
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released
the following statement on the passing of Mayor Walter E.
Washington.
``The era of home rule ended today with the passing of
Walter Washington. Mayor Washington simultaneously shaped the
office of mayor and the practice of home rule governance for
a city that had lived without democracy for a hundred years.
The District has a strong mayor form of government in no
small part because his service as appointed mayor
demonstrated that a mayor could lead this city as mayors of
other big cities did. His service is significant for far more
than the office he held, however; President Lyndon Johnson
appointed Walter Washington our first mayor because he wanted
a man of great character and ability to pave the way for an
elected mayor. The people of the District returned the
compliment by electing Walter Washington our first elected
mayor. Residents realized he had the ``right stuff' to be
mayor--not only outstanding ability and integrity but also
the indispensable political skills and common touch that make
people want to follow the lead of an elected official. That
combination of gifts proved mighty useful during the 1968
riots. The mayor was legendary for his way with the President
and the Congress, but Walter Washington was appreciated in
this town not only because he could talk to power but because
he talked equally well to the powerless.
``People who missed his years as mayor often got some sense
of his political gifts on the public occasions when his
extraordinary wit was in full form as it remained throughout
Walter's life.
``With the passing of Mayor Washington, the home rule era
he shaped also passes. Perhaps, almost 30 years after Walter
Washington was first elected, Congress will now understand
that a new era of full democracy, independence and voting
rights is overdue.
``Mrs. Mary Cornelia Washington, Walter's daughter,
Bennetta Jules-Rosette and his family have my condolences and
the sympathy of the city who loved him.''
____
[From the Washington Post, Oct. 28, 2003]
Walter E. Washington
``What I would like to be remembered for is that Walter
Washington changed the spirit of the people of this city,
that he came in as mayor when there was hate and greed and
misunderstanding among our people and the
[[Page E2197]]
races were polarized. And in the span of just a little over a
decade, he brought people together through love and
compassion, he helped bring about home rule . . . and helped
people have more meaningful, satisfying and enjoyable
lives.''
This noble self-remembrance of Walter Edward Washington,
who died yesterday at the age of 88, is--like so much that he
accomplished for the city he deeply loved--just right. More
than anyone in this century, he was the heart, soul, spirit
and creator of the capital city as it is enjoyed today. Were
it not for his perfect presence at a critical point in the
city's history, the people of Washington would not be
enjoying even the limited self-government they now have.
To appreciate fully the importance of this most likable and
shrewd negotiator-leader, we need only recall a 70-percent-
black city in strict colonial bondage, barred from acting on
any significant local policy matter without the assent of an
indisputably hostile and domineering U.S. House committee of
mostly Southern segregationists. For many years before
President Johnson pressured Congress to accord home rule to
the District of Columbia--only to suffer an embarrassing
defeat--Walter Washington had been among the tireless workers
on behalf of enfranchising the citizens of the capital. Mr.
Johnson, determined to strike back at Congress, used his
executive powers to reorganize the District government from
an arm of the federal government headed by three appointed
commissioners to a new system with a single appointed
commissioner and a council. For commissioner--a position
whose holder the president unofficially but forcefully dubbed
``mayor''--the president chose Mr. Washington, the first
African American named to lead a U.S. city.
Thanks to Mr. Washington's keen sense of the politically
possible, the knowledge of the bureaucratic ropes that he
gained as a federal official and his exquisite abilities to
put the most wary people at ease, the city began to enjoy new
status on its road to limited home rule. He transformed the
face of the District government, placing blacks in key
positions that were long the exclusive preserve of whites.
Until his arrival, the District Building had been a tomb,
barely visited by residents. Powerful local business
interests dealt directly with Congress, as did the 80-
percent-white police force and other organized employee
groups. As Mr. Washington involved more citizens in
government activities, the top floor of the building came
into its own as a local government center. Congress approved
a limited home rule bill in 1973; the next year, Mr.
Washington was elected mayor.
Though Mayor Washington was best known for his easygoing,
humor-laced manner, he was bold and tough when it mattered.
In 1966, when President Johnson first talked to him about a
commissioner job with the understanding that another, white,
commissioner would supervise the police department, Mr.
Washington said no. When he was tapped the next year as lone
commissioner, his stance prevailed. It paid off in later
years, when Mayor Washington's public safety commissioner,
Patrick V. Murphy, and Police Chief Jerry V. Wilson recruited
and promoted African Americans and trained a once insensitive
force to deal with the protests and riots that came to
Washington.
Mr. Washington's ability to gain the confidence of federal
leaders extended to President Nixon, who on his first full
day in office toured the riot-torn areas of downtown,
expressed confidence in the mayor and pledged new federal
support for his rebuilding programs. Mr. Washington, as
usual, had done his homework and labored behind the scenes to
set the stage. He was always the healer, the pleasant but
insistent voice of reason on behalf of the city, able to draw
on an unmatched network of sources--from the streets to the
businesses, embassies and focal points of federal power.
To a person, Walter Washington's successors sought his
counsel. His politics of inclusion, his honesty and civility,
and his strengthening of the local fabric were invaluable. He
was, in every sense, the city father--whose family across the
wards will remember him fondly.
____
[From the Washington Post, Oct. 28, 2003]
The End of an Era
(By Colbert I. King)
Tom Eagleton, Missouri Democrat and chairman of the
Senate's District of Columbia Committee, was chain-smoking
and as keyed up as I had ever seen him. The subcommittee's
majority staff director, Robert Harris, on the other hand,
was his usual stoic self. I was seated in the customary
position of the committee's minority staff director, off to
the side. We were in Eagleton's Senate office, and the
purpose of the gathering wasn't social.
Sitting on the sofa directly in front of Eagleton was
Walter Washington, the presidentially appointed mayor of the
District. Next to him sat Julian Dugas, the mayor's longtime
friend and director of licenses and inspections. Walter
Washington was the most relaxed person in the room.
It was 1973. Congress had just passed the home rule bill
and Walter Washington ``was positioning himself to run for
mayor in the city's first municipal election in 70 years.
Eagleton had asked the mayor to come to Capitol Hill because
he was going to break some bad news and wanted to do it face
to face.
The committee had asked the General Accounting Office to
take a look at the city's books. The GAO's preliminary view
was that the books weren't auditable. Eagleton was going to
call for a reorganization of the city's finances by a public
accounting firm, and he expected the timing would be
embarrassing to Washington.
``Walter, I don't want to hurt you politically but I won't
be able to live with myself if we turn over the D.C.
government to the city with the books in a mess,'' I recall a
heavily perspiring Eagleton as saying. ``Now you can go out
of here and publicly attack me if you want, and I will
understand,'' he said. ``But I've got to do this.''
Washington merely smiled and, calling Eagleton by his first
name, said he recognized the problem. The books were a
longstanding mess and had been an albatross around the city's
neck since the time when it was governed by three
presidentially appointed commissioners and tightly controlled
by congressional committees, said Washington. And after a few
pleasantries, Washington, accompanied by Dugas, shook hands
all around and left. It was as if the mayor had given the
senator special dispensation to do his job. And Eagleton
seemed appreciative.
I tell the story because it provides a glimpse of the
Walter Washington I knew behind the scenes. Unlike the
current mayor, Anthony Williams, and the two city chief
executives--Marion Barry and Sharon Pratt--who followed
Washington in office, Walter Washington operated on Capitol
Hill like an impresario, winning small victories here and
there for the city in ways that escaped the attention of the
average citizen. He managed to get hostile Southern barons to
open federal purse strings for city projects long neglected
by the three commissioners. And he diplomatically staved off
rapacious members of Congress who thought the city was theirs
for the taking.
It's fair to say that without Walter Washington, there
would not have been home rule, at least not in the year when
it was achieved. The road from appointed to elected
government had plenty of pitfalls, both on the Hill and in
the city, but Washington deftly steered around them. He
cajoled when necessary, pleaded when required and schmoozed
unceasingly. He stopped at nothing to get for District
residents what they wanted most of all, an end to what
Washington called an ``anachronism of votelessness in our
capital city.'' As he told the Senate District committee
when he was making his pitch to pass the bill in 1973:
``Whatever you call it, home rule, local suffrage, self-
determination or self-government--I am for it.''
Much is made of the home rule movement and the people
taking to the street to bring about self-government. Much of
what you hear about that period is pure, unadulterated myth.
It was the work of Walter Washington, moving and shaking
behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, that kept alive the drive
for home rule. I know. I was there. The thought of an elected
District of Columbia government being in Walter Washington's
hands probably won as many votes in the Senate and House as
any single effort by one individual on the Hill or in the
city.
Washington's victory in 1974 as the city's first elected
mayor was the first step in transforming this once
overwhelmingly African American city from one dominated by
southerners and a predominantly white city government
leadership and police department to the multiracial and
multicultural city we are today. And Mayor Washington pulled
it off without polarizing and balkanizing the city.
Although I saw a great deal of Walter Washington when he
was both an appointed and elected mayor, I saw even more of
him in the past several years, as we shared membership in the
same close-knit social club, the DePriest Fifteen. The name's
no mistake. About 15 of us, all associated with the city in
one form or another, would gather on a Saturday night once a
month without our spouses for an evening of eating and
drinking whatever we wanted without the presence of overseers
and tattletales. We would share complete and unabridged war
stories, the kind we are likely to take to our graves. Walter
Washington had a storehouse of the best, which he shared with
great relish. I can't imagine how we'll do it without him.
With his death, we are witnessing not only the passing of a
local icon but also the passing of an era. His was a time
when leaders understood the meaning of the words civility and
comity. Walter Washington will be remembered as a uniter, not
a divider, as a healer, not a destroyer.
And he did it all with a style and a light touch--and out
of love for this city and the people in it--that we shall
never see the likes of again.
____________________