[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 109 (Thursday, July 19, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Page S5203]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING WILLIAM RASPBERRY

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, my State of Mississippi and the American 
journalism community have suffered a great loss with the death of 
William Raspberry. As a widely respected writer, his articles were 
refreshing in their depth of understanding and even handed reporting of 
the perils and triumphs of politics and government.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from 
the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, written by Sid Salter.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Clarion-Ledger, July 18, 2012]

          Raspberry's Amazing Legacy Reaches Beyond Journalism

                            (By Sid Salter)

       When I learned of the death of longtime Washington Post 
     columnist William Raspberry, I was immediately reminded of a 
     conversation I'd had with him in 2005 in his hometown of 
     Okolona. Raspberry, who logged 40 years writing commentary 
     for the Post and saw his work syndicated nationally in over 
     200 newspapers, died at age 76 at his Washington home of 
     prostate cancer on July 17.
       Raspberry won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and 
     was then only the second African-American writer afforded 
     that honor.
       I had met Raspberry several times over the years at 
     conferences, but never spent much time with him until 2000 
     when he became the first African-American journalist inducted 
     into the Mississippi Press Association's Hall of Fame. In 
     2005, after learning of the early childhood education/
     intervention effort he was personally funding in Okolona, I 
     asked him to meet me there and to tell me about his vision 
     for changing the game for disadvantaged children in a town 
     with a poor track record in public education.
       Prior to the interview, I asked him if it bothered him that 
     in 2000 he had been the first black MPA Hall of Fame inductee 
     and that coming some six years after winning the Pulitzer. He 
     reflected on the question, then said: ``No, not really. One 
     thing one learns growing up in the segregated South is 
     patience. I was pleasantly surprised when the honor came and 
     I was glad that my mother lived to see it, but my career had 
     taught me that change comes ever so slowly.''
       One area in which Raspberry lost his patience was early 
     childhood education. Raspberry's solution was program he 
     funded and founded called Baby Steps in Okolona. The Baby 
     Steps Program has been a partnership between columnist 
     William Raspberry, the Okolona Area Chamber of Commerce, the 
     University of Mississippi and the Barksdale Reading 
     Institute. Other key community partners include a number of 
     Okolona and Tupelo churches and local volunteers. ``The (Baby 
     Steps') basic idea is that all parents, no matter how 
     unsuccessful they might have been in school, want their 
     children to succeed academically--even if many of them don't 
     know how to make that happen,'' Raspberry wrote in his 
     nationally syndicated Nov. 17, 2003, column in The Washington 
     Post.
       ``We propose to teach them. The text for the effort is 
     Dorothy Rich's ``MegaSkills''--a set of 11 attitudes and 
     competencies that she believes lead to success in school and 
     in life . . . the idea is to train the parents themselves, as 
     they children's most effective teachers, to pass these 
     MegaSkills along to their children.''
       On that day in 2005 in Okolona, I joined Raspberry at the 
     Hazel Ivy Child Care Center--Ground Zero for the Baby Steps 
     program in Okolona--along with two of the city's other day 
     care centers. Raspberry arrived at Ivy's center and was 
     greeted not as one of the nation's premier journalists, but 
     as a neighbor and friend called ``Bill.''
       Raspberry cut his journalistic teeth covering the Watts 
     Riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and wrote passionately about the 
     violence that gripped Washington, D.C., for a time. But in 
     many ways, Raspberry never forgot his Mississippi upbringing 
     and the inspiration of his schoolteacher parents. He was an 
     advocate of self-reliance and hard work.
       In 2005, I asked Raspberry to define his legacy in 
     journalism: ``I'm at an age where legacy becomes important. 
     I'd like to leave something behind other than yellowing 
     newspaper columns, something that people can carry forward. 
     At the end of the day, I'd like to be remembered as someone 
     who always tried to make clear the things that were pulling 
     us apart and tried to ameliorate it, to point out that we're 
     not as far apart as folks would have us to believe.''
       Bill Raspberry's place in American journalism is assured, 
     but Mississippians would be wise to claim our part of this 
     good man's distinguished personal and professional legacy.

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