[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 26 (Tuesday, March 8, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S2241]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      TRIBUTE TO SAMUEL T. DANIELS

 Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, With the death on January 6th, 
2005, at the age of 82 of Samuel Thornton Daniels, Sr., my city of 
Baltimore and the State of Maryland lost a distinguished citizen, a 
courageous and far-sighted leader, a source of inspiration and, 
especially, a beloved friend.
  Sam Daniels, the Grand Master, was known to his fellow members of the 
Prince Hall Masons simply as ``The Grand,'' and grand he was. A 
Baltimorean through and through, he was born in the city and educated 
at Douglass High School and Coppin State College. He married his 
beloved wife Gladys, a fellow student at Coppin, and together for more 
than 60 years they went on to raise a new generation of Baltimoreans. 
Sam made our community a better place for all its people.
  Service to others came naturally to Sam Daniels. He interrupted his 
college studies to serve in the Army in World War II, returning to 
Coppin State to receive his degree in 1948. When the Korean War 
conflict broke out 2 years later, Sam returned to military service, and 
reached the rank of captain before receiving his honorable discharge. 
Soon thereafter he joined Gladys as a teacher in the Baltimore public 
school system.
  In the mid-1950s, Sam Daniels set out on the path that was to shape 
his life's work. It was not just that he joined the civil rights 
movement; rather, in innumerable ways he shaped it and he led it. His 
professional commitments tell part of the story: Maryland Commission on 
Interracial Problems and Relations; Baltimore Community Relations 
Commission; Baltimore Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and 
then, starting in 1967 and continuing for more than two decades, the 
Baltimore Council for Equal Business Opportunity, or CEBO. During the 
1960s, in addition to his other commitments, Sam also worked for the 
AFSCME local unions representing Baltimore's municipal workers. In 1968 
he was named to the city's school board by then-Mayor D'Alessandro, 
where his intelligence, his principles, his clear vision, and his wise 
and generous temperament all combined to make him, as the mayor was to 
observe, ``a calming influence on the board during an unsettling 
time.'' Sam balanced his professional commitments with his role in The 
Prince Hall Masons, whose Grand Master he was to become and who knew 
and loved him as ``The Grand.'' Under his leadership The Prince Hall 
Masons grew to have 5,000 members and to play a major role in the 
historic movement toward civil rights. When Dr. King came to Baltimore 
in October 1964, Sam Daniels stood among the leaders who welcomed him 
to the Prince Hall Masons Lodge. In everything he did he challenged us 
to make our Nation live up to its ideals.
  Of all his many accomplishments, Sam Daniels considered CEBO the most 
important. It began modestly enough with a grant from the Ford 
Foundation, but over more than two decades under Sam Daniels' 
leadership CEBO became one of the first business development 
organizations in the country, helping to create opportunities for 
entrepreneurship and business where precious few existed for 
Baltimore's African-American community and along with those 
opportunities, new hopes, new plans, and new dreams. Sam Daniels has 
been described as a ``giant'' and an ``icon,'' and surely these words 
reflect the critical role he played in expanding the opportunities for 
African American entrepreneurship and wealth-building, which has meant 
so much to the city that he served in so many different ways.
  Sam Daniels was a giant and an icon in other ways as well in 
character and temperament. Mayor D'Alessandro, who nearly 40 years ago 
appointed him to the school board, remembers him as ``an absolutely 
decent human being,'' and his pastor, the Reverend Marion C. Bascom, 
calls him ``the most giving human being this city has ever known.'' In 
the words of George L. Russell, the former city solicitor and judge, 
``he was a temperate person who conveyed a great deal of wisdom.'' He 
was a great man and a great citizen, and he has left us all a 
magnificent legacy. We will miss him, and our thoughts are with his 
wife Gladys, his children, and his grandchildren.
  The Baltimore Sun paid tribute to Sam Daniels in an obituary 
published on January 8, 2005. I ask that it be printed in the Record.
  The material follows.

                 [From the Baltimore Sun, Jan. 8, 2005]

      Samuel T. Daniels, 82, Leader in Local Civil Rights Struggle

                           (By Jacques Kelly)

       Samuel T. Daniels, a local leader in the civil rights 
     movement who championed African-American business enterprise 
     and led the Prince Hall Masons for nearly four decades, died 
     Thursday at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center of 
     complications from a fall and a brain illness. The Northwest 
     Baltimore resident was 82.
       Mr. Daniels had retired in 1989 after more than 20 years as 
     executive director of the Baltimore Council for Equal 
     Business Opportunity, a private organization that encouraged 
     black participation in business. He was also a past grand 
     master of the 5,000-member Prince Hall Lodge, an African-
     American Masonic organization.
       ``He was an absolutely decent human being and an integral 
     part of the Baltimore civil rights movement in the 1960s,'' 
     said former Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro III, who named Mr. 
     Daniels to the city school board in December 1968. ``He was 
     tough, decent, orderly and competent. He was an articulate 
     spokesman for the black community.''
       ``He was the most giving human being this city has ever 
     known,'' said the Rev. Marion C. Bascom, Mr. Daniels' pastor 
     and friend. ``Samuel outstretched his hand to just about 
     everyone I've ever known.''
       Born in Baltimore and raised on Druid Hill Avenue, he was a 
     1940 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and earned a 
     bachelor's degree in education from what is now Coppin State 
     University. He served in the Army in World War II and the 
     Korean War, attaining the rank of captain.
       For eight years, he taught in city public schools, 
     including the old Henry H. Garnet School at Division and 
     Lanvale streets.
       In 1958, he was named executive secretary of the Baltimore 
     Community Relations Commission and simultaneously worked for 
     Baltimore Municipal Employees Local 44 of the American 
     Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. In 1961, 
     he attended the Harvard Business School's trade union 
     program.
       Mr. Daniels was a school board member from 1969 to 1971. 
     ``He was a calming influence on the board during an 
     unsettling time,'' said Mr. D'Alesandro.
       Mr. Daniels became head of the Prince Hall Masons in the 
     early 1960s and was among the leaders who welcomed the Rev. 
     Martin Luther King Jr. to Baltimore on Oct. 31, 1964. Dr. 
     King's visit, including an appearance at the lodge's temple 
     on Eutaw Place, was on behalf of President Lyndon B. 
     Johnson's election campaign.
       In a 1999 article in The Sun, Mr. Daniels recalled that day 
     and how Baltimore was becoming aggressive in its pursuit of 
     civil rights. The rally filled the temple.
       ``They became friends after that visit,'' said Mr. Daniels' 
     wife of more than 60 years, the former Gladys Eva Wise.
       Friends said that Mr. Daniels paid travel expenses so that 
     young civil rights advocates could attend the 1965 marches in 
     Selma, Ala.
       ``He had been central to the advancement of black people in 
     Baltimore,'' said George L. Russell Jr., a lawyer and former 
     city solicitor and judge. ``He was a man who carried a great 
     deal of dignity. He was a temperate person who conveyed a 
     great deal of wisdom.''
       In 1967, Mr. Daniels became director of CEBO, an 
     organization initially supported by the Ford Foundation. A 
     decade later, Mr. Daniels told The Sun that his most 
     important accomplishment had been helping African-American 
     business owners establish relationships with large commercial 
     banks.
       He also pointed to many black-owned businesses, including 
     the Super Pride grocery chain, as proof that his council was 
     working.
       In 1982, Mr. Daniels called for voter mobilization in black 
     communities.
       ``Legislation, more than anything else, influences our 
     lives daily, monthly, weekly and eternally,'' he said at a 
     meeting reported in The Evening Sun. ``If we are not a voting 
     people, those in office are not going to care about us.''
       Mr. Daniels was the recipient of many community honors and 
     testimonials. A room has been named after him at Coppin, and 
     Morgan State University awarded him an honorary degree in 
     2000.
       Mr. Daniels was a longtime member of Douglas Memorial 
     Church.
       Mr. Daniels will lie in state from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 
     Wednesday at the Willard W. Allen Masonic Temple, 1301 Eutaw 
     Place.
       Kappa fraternal services will be held at 6:30 p.m. 
     Wednesday and be followed by Masonic services at 7:30 p.m. 
     Mr. Daniels will rest in a sanctuary named in his honor.
       A family hour wake will begin at 11 a.m. Thursday. The 
     funeral service begins at noon and will be followed by 
     interment at Arbutus Cemetery.
       In addition to his wife, Mr. Daniels is survived by two 
     sons, Samuel T. Daniels Jr., chief inspector for the city 
     liquor board, and Van B. Daniels, a manager for the Maryland 
     Lottery; a brother, Edward Daniels; and three grandchildren. 
     All are of Baltimore.

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