[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 123 (Friday, August 1, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1311]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 RECOGNIZING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FORMER CONGRESSWOMAN EDITH GREEN TO 
            ADVANCING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN AND MINORITIES

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. GERALD E. CONNOLLY

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 31, 2014

  Mr. CONNOLLY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the tremendous 
contributions of our former colleague, Edith Starrett Green, who served 
in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1955-1974, representing 
Oregon's 3rd District. During her tenure in the House, Mrs. Green was 
one of the nation's leading advocates for expanding access to higher 
education for all Americans and ensuring equal pay and opportunities 
for women and minorities.
  Among her many accomplishments, Mrs. Green authored two landmark 
pieces of legislation that continue to shape the field of post-
secondary education, including the Higher Education Facilities Act of 
1963, which authorized the use of Federal funds to expand and improve 
classrooms, libraries, and laboratories on college and university 
campuses. She also sponsored the Higher Education Act of 1965, which 
for the first time authorized Federal financial assistance for 
undergraduate students. President Lyndon Johnson referred to the Higher 
Education Facilities Act as ``the greatest step forward in the field 
since the passage of the Land-Grant Act of 1862.'' Her commitment and 
success earned Mrs. Green the monikers ``the Mother of Higher 
Education' and ``Mrs. Education.''
  Mrs. Green, a native of South Dakota, also was concerned with the 
issues of equal opportunity and equal pay for women and minorities and 
advanced pioneering legislation addressing both issues. She was 
appointed to President John F. Kennedy's Commission on the Status of 
Women and chaired its Civil and Political Rights Committee in the early 
1960s. She was the author of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which she 
helped push across the finish line eight years after first introducing 
it. She followed that by winning support for her amendments to the 
Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1965 to expand the scope of the bill 
to include training opportunities for urban youth.
  Mrs. Green was known as a shrewd legislator, once called a ``bare-
knuckle fighter'' by one Congressional observer, and those skills 
helped her advance this and other issues close to her heart. She spent 
much of her public life working to eliminate the social and legal 
obstacles preventing women from achieving equality in post-secondary 
education.
  Perhaps most notably, Mrs. Green was one of several members to 
introduce legislation prohibiting federally-funded colleges and 
universities from discriminating against women after the idea was born 
out of seven days of hearings she held on the topic in her role as 
Chairman of the Education and Labor Subcommittee on Higher Education. 
``If you can make every young girl know that there's no ceiling of 
expectations, that there is not height to which that young girl cannot 
go, she'll aspire to that,'' Mrs. Green said in a 1978 interview. 
Ultimately, she collaborated with fellow Representative Patsy Mink, of 
Hawaii, and Senator Birch Bayh, of Indiana, on the groundbreaking Title 
IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which opened new academic 
and athletic opportunities for women and has had a transformative 
effect on future generations of girls and women across America. Upon 
her retirement in December 1974, former New York Senator Daniel Patrick 
Moynihan remarked that ``she presided over the enactment of the most 
important education legislation in the history of the Republic, and I 
hope someone would say so.'' Mrs. Green returned to Oregon, where she 
taught college government classes and passed away in April 1987.
  Mr. Speaker, it has been said before and surely deserves repeating: 
The passionate and persistent efforts of Congresswoman Edith Green have 
forever transformed our modern classrooms, athletic fields, and 
employment settings for the better, and she deserves our sincere 
respect and gratitude. I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing 
the tremendous record of accomplishment compiled by our former 
colleague, Edith Starrett Green, and in thanking her family for their 
sacrifice and support of her career, which continues to help advance 
opportunities for so many others.

                          ____________________