[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 161 (Friday, November 7, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2274-E2275]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     COMMEMORATION FOR FORMER WASHINGTON, D.C. MAYOR WALTER EDWARD 
                               WASHINGTON

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, November 7, 2003

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, funeral services were held for the first 
elected Mayor of the District of Columbia in the 20th century, Mayor 
Walter E. Washington, on Saturday, November 1, 2003. The funeral had 
the full trappings of a state funeral that Mayor Washington deserved. 
He lay in state at the John A. Wilson Building (the District Building) 
on Friday, October 31. Following memorial services, which took place at 
the Washington National Cathedral, Mayor Washington's coffin, draped 
with the District of Columbia flag, was carried through the city on a 
large fire truck, passing through neighborhoods associated with his 
life in our city, including LeDroit Park, where he lived, Howard 
University, where he attended undergraduate and law school, and the 
City Museum which he helped to found. He was laid to rest at the 
Lincoln Memorial Cemetery.
  I paid tribute to Mayor Washington in remarks last week and also 
placed in the Record a Washington Post editorial and a personal tribute 
from Post editorial writer, Colbert King. Howard University Law School 
Professor J. Clay Smith, Jr., who served with me when I chaired the 
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has asked me to share with the 
House his reflections to the faculty and students of the law school 
concerning Mayor Washington. I am pleased to submit his remarks for the 
Record.

              In Memory of Walter E. Washington 1915-2003

                   (By Professor J. Clay Smith, Jr.)

       Dear Faculty and Students:
       I pause today to share with you just a bit of information 
     about one of our most esteemed graduate, the Honorable Walter 
     E. Washington.
       Many of our students attend law school because they are 
     interested in politics or public service. For nearly 140 
     years our law school has produced several leading political 
     figures in the Nation and beyond. One of our graduates, the 
     Honorable Walter E. Washington, class of 1938, died this 
     week. Why is his life important to us? He was a graduate of 
     Howard University School of Law, who is an example of what 
     our students can do to make the world a better place. It is 
     an opportunity for us to reflect, even for a moment and 
     consider why we came to Howard Law School and the aspirations 
     that directed us to enter the profession of law or to teach.
       Walter Washington was a friend of many people in Washington 
     and abroad. He was graduated during a period when life was 
     hard, but his spirit to achieve was strong and his 
     determination unstoppable. There was little if any 
     scholarship money when Walter Washington entered the law 
     school. His generation worked their way through school, but 
     they studied long hours at night into the morning sun. 
     Washington, like so many of the students of his generation, 
     were guided by their law teachers, yet they also brought with 
     them seeds planted for the future from their high schools, 
     colleges, families, and friends.
       Washington was a graduated from Howard University and its 
     law school. I was honored to know him personally, but not as 
     much as I would have like to have known the depth of his 
     extraordinary intellect and perseverance in his early years. 
     Many people knew of him very early in his life and most must 
     have predicted that he would be successful in his calling to 
     the law. But he stretched beyond the law to the political 
     arena and in 1973, he was first appointed by President 
     Johnson as Mayor-Commissioner of the District of Columbia 
     becoming the first African American Mayor in a large city in 
     the Nation. He was subsequently elected as Mayor of 
     Washington, DC in 1974. As a recent law graduate, I remember 
     his election well because he was a graduate of the very law 
     school that I attended. It made me proud of our school and 
     caused me to respect him all these years even as an outsider 
     to the life that he lived, except for the past 7 years during 
     which I got to know him in more professional surroundings.
       I bring this message to the faculty and more importantly to 
     our students as an example of what students are capable of 
     becoming and how we influence them in the ways each of us 
     teach and inspire them, even students who may not see the 
     value or the power of their intellects that will rest upon 
     recognition of their own worth and accountability. Walter 
     Washington loved his law school and the friends that he made 
     during his matriculation at Howard University. In so many 
     ways, Mayor Washington's life is like so many of our 
     graduates who placed or left marks in the sand that will not 
     and cannot be brushed away. Mayor Washington will be 
     remembered not only by the wonderful articles that appear in 
     today's newspaper (Washington Post Oct. 28, 2003), he is to 
     be studied by our students as an exemplar of what (you) can 
     become. As for us who teach, I hope that from time to time we 
     remind our students that what we do here at the law school is 
     to help mold them toward law so that they can lead as Walter 
     E. Washington and so many others of our graduates have done 
     to secure the democracy, to find answers to secure the poor, 
     to create better housing, to be honored by the people as 
     leaders from the law school of its first Dean, John Mercer 
     Langston.

[[Page E2275]]

       Nevertheless, to achieve these wonderful levels, giants 
     like Washington, to hear him tell it, meant that a 100% 
     effort was required in the study of law. Greatness may be 
     defined in many ways, our law school has graduated many great 
     people, and many more will come and leave this law school 
     that will and who have prepared themselves to be leaders and 
     successful lawyers in communities they will serve. Mayor 
     Washington was one of such students. He will be missed, but 
     he has left with us, particularly our law school, seeds that 
     will grow many others like him.

                          ____________________