[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 80 (Friday, May 22, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3305-S3308]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______
                                 

                        REMEMBERING GEORGE HALEY

 Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I come to the floor to honor the 
life of George Haley, a distinguished Tennessean and distinguished 
American who died at the age of 89 on May 13.
  President Clinton appointed George as Ambassador to Gambia, the 
country from which George's ninth generation grandfather, Kunta Kinte, 
was captured and brought to Annapolis, MD in the hold of a slave ship. 
George's brother, Alex, wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 
``Roots,'' about the Haley family history.
  Simon P. Haley, the father of George and Alex, was ``wasted'' when he 
was growing up. This meant, as Alex told the story, that Simon was 
allowed to continue his education, ``wasting'' the opportunity for him 
to work in the cotton fields. Alex wrote the story of Simon P. Haley in 
the Reader's Digest article, ``The Man on the Train,'' telling how his 
father had become the first black graduate of Cornell's agriculture 
college, and then came to Jackson, TN to teach at Lane College.
  It was in the small West Tennessee town of Henning where Alex would 
sit by the front porch steps in the summer listening to his grandmother 
and great aunts tell the stories of Kunta Kinte that eventually became 
``Roots.''
  George Haley, after serving in the Air Force, entered The University 
of Arkansas Law School in 1949, where he was required to live and study 
in a cramped basement to separate him from the white students. ``It was 
reminiscent of a slave in the hold of a ship,'' he once said, ``I was 
the Kunta Kinte of the law school.'' He stuck it out, graduating as a 
member of the law review. Alex wrote about him as well in the Reader's 
Digest, ``The Man Who Wouldn't Quit.'' George had a remarkable and 
diverse career serving as a Republican state senator in Kansas and then 
between 1969 and his death, serving in the administration of Presidents 
Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. 
Bush.
  I first met George when I was governor of Tennessee during the 1980s. 
He introduced me to Alex, who became one of our family's closest 
friends. Few men or women have shown the intelligence, courage and 
sense of public responsibility during their lifetimes that George Haley 
demonstrated. He was a kind man and a good friend. Honey and I offer 
our sympathies to his wife Doris and to other members of the Haley 
family. When remembering the life of George Haley, it is easy to do 
what his brother Alex always advised, ``Find the Good and Praise It.''

[[Page S3306]]

  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record ``The Man on 
the Train'' and ``The Man Who Wouldn't Quit,'' by Alex Haley.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Reader's Digest, Feb. 1991]

                          The Man On The Train

                            (By Alex Haley)

       Though some people may attempt to live life from a purely 
     selfish, self-centered perspective, it is in giving of 
     ourselves to others that we find our greatest sense of 
     meaning. And so, as we search for meaning, one of the best 
     places to look is outward--toward others--using the principle 
     of charity.
       Too often the meaning of charity is reduced to the act of 
     giving alms or donating sums of money to those who are 
     economically disadvantaged. But charity in its purest forms 
     involves so much more.
       It includes the giving of our hearts, our minds, and our 
     talents in ways that enrich the lives of all people--
     regardless of whether they are poor or rich. Charity is 
     selflessness. It is love in work clothes.
       Alex Haley's father, Simon Alexander Haley, worked his way 
     through college and graduate school as a Pullman porter until 
     he met The Man On The Train. Always, Haley seems to be 
     telling us, opportunity awaits those who are prepared.
       A poignant example is found in the story of The Man On The 
     Train. Recalled by distinguished and Pulitzer Prize-winning 
     author Alex Haley, it is the true story of a man Alex never 
     met, but one to whom he came to give great honor and credit.
       In addition, Haley also shares why he broke down in tears 
     when he first visited the offices of a famous newspaper. As 
     you read his account, resist the temptation to reduce the 
     story to that of a kind man offering a handout.
       Whenever my brothers, sister and I get together we 
     inevitably talk about Dad. We all owe our success in life to 
     him--and to a mysterious man he met one night on a train. Our 
     father, Simon Alexander Haley, was born in 1892 and reared in 
     the small farming town of Savannah, Tennessee. He was the 
     eighth child of Alec Haley--a tough-willed former slave and 
     part-time sharecropper--and of a woman named Queen.
       Although sensitive and emotional, my grandmother could be 
     tough-willed herself, especially when it came to her 
     children. One of her ambitions was that my father be 
     educated.
       Back then in Savannah a boy was considered ``wasted'' if he 
     remained in school after he was big enough to do farm work. 
     So when my father reached the sixth grade, Queen began 
     massaging grandfather's ego.
       ``Since we have eight children,'' she would argue, 
     ``wouldn't it be prestigious if we deliberately wasted one 
     and got him educated?'' After many arguments, Grandfather let 
     Dad finish the eighth grade. Still, he had to work in the 
     fields after school.
       But Queen was not satisfied. As eighth grade ended, she 
     began planting seeds, saying Grandfather's image would reach 
     new heights if their son went to high school.
       Her barrage worked. Stern old Alec Haley handed my father 
     five hard-earned ten-dollar bills, told him never to ask for 
     more and sent him off to high school. Traveling first by mule 
     cart and then by train--the first train he had ever seen--Dad 
     finally alighted in Jackson, Tennessee, where he enrolled in 
     the preparatory department of Lane College. The black 
     Methodist school offered courses up through junior college.
       Dad's $50 was soon used up, and to continue in school, he 
     worked as a waiter, a handyman and a helper at a school for 
     wayward boys. And when winter came, he'd arise at 4 a.m., go 
     into prosperous white families' homes and make fires so the 
     residents would awaken in comfort. Poor Simon became 
     something of a campus joke with his one pair of pants and 
     shoes, and his droopy eyes. Often he was found asleep with a 
     textbook fallen into his lap.
       The constant struggle to earn money took its toll. Dad's 
     grades began to founder. But he pushed onward and completed 
     senior high. Next he enrolled in A & T College in Greensboro, 
     North Carolina, a land-grant school where he struggled 
     through freshman and sophomore years. One bleak afternoon at 
     the close of his second year, Dad was called into a teacher's 
     office and told that he'd failed a course--one that required 
     a textbook he'd been too poor to buy.
       A ponderous sense of defeat descended upon him. For years 
     he'd given his utmost, and now he felt he had accomplished 
     nothing. Maybe he should return home to his original destiny 
     of sharecropping.
       But days later, a letter came from the Pullman Company 
     saying he was one of 24 black college men selected from 
     hundreds of applicants to be summertime sleeping-car porters. 
     Dad was ecstatic. Here was a chance! He eagerly reported for 
     duty and was assigned a Buffalo-to-Pittsburgh train.
       The train was racketing along one morning about 2 a.m. when 
     the porter's buzzer sounded. Dad sprang up, jerked on his 
     white jacket, and made his way to the passenger berths. 
     There, a distinguished-looking man said he and his wife were 
     having trouble sleeping, and they both wanted glasses of warm 
     milk. Dad brought milk and napkins on a silver tray. The man 
     handed one glass through the lower-berth curtains to his wife 
     and, sipping from his own glass, began to engage Dad in 
     conversation.
       Pullman Company rules strictly prohibited any conversation 
     beyond ``Yes, sir'' or ``No, ma'am,'' but this passenger kept 
     asking questions. He even followed Dad back into the porter's 
     cubicle.
       ``Where are you from?''
       ``Savannah, Tennessee, sir.''
       ``You speak quite well.''
       ``Thank you, sir.''
       ``What work did you do before this?''
       ``I'm a student at A & T College in Greensboro, sir.'' Dad 
     felt no need to add that he was considering returning home to 
     sharecrop.
       The man looked at him keenly, finally wished him well and 
     returned to his bunk.
       The next morning, the train reached Pittsburgh. At a time 
     when 50 cents was a good tip, the man gave five dollars to 
     Simon Haley, who was profusely grateful. All summer, he had 
     been saving every tip he received, and when the job finally 
     ended, he had accumulated enough to buy his own mule and 
     plow. But he realized his savings could also pay for one full 
     semester at A & T without his having to work a single odd 
     job.
       Dad decided he deserved at least one semester free of 
     outside work. Only that way would he know what grades he 
     could truly achieve.
       He returned to Greensboro. But no sooner did he arrive on 
     campus than he was summoned by the college president. Dad was 
     full of apprehension as he seated himself before the great 
     man. ``I have a letter here, Simon,'' the president said.
       ``Yes, sir.''
       ``You were a porter for Pullman this summer?''
       ``Yes, sir.''
       ``Did you meet a certain man one night and bring him warm 
     milk?''
       ``Yes, sir.''
       ``Well, his name is Mr. R.S.M. Boyce, and he's a retired 
     executive of the Curtis Publishing Company, which publishes 
     The Saturday Evening Post. He has donated $500 for your 
     board, tuition and books for the entire school year.''
       My father was astonished.
       The surprise grant not only enabled dad to finish A & T, 
     but to graduate first in his class. And the achievement 
     earned him a full scholarship to Cornell University in 
     Ithaca, New York.
       In 1920, Dad, then a newlywed, moved to Ithaca with his 
     bride, Bertha. He entered Cornell to pursue his master's 
     degree, and my mother enrolled at the Ithaca Conservatory of 
     Music to study piano. I was born the following year.
       One day decades later, editors of The Saturday Evening Post 
     invited me to their editorial offices in New York to discuss 
     the condensation of my first book, The Autobiography of 
     Malcolm X. I was so proud, so happy, to be sitting in those 
     wood-paneled offices on Lexington Avenue. Suddenly I 
     remembered Mr. Boyce, and how it was his generosity that 
     enabled me to be there amid those editors, as a writer. And 
     then I began to cry. I just couldn't help it.
       We children of Simon Haley often reflect on Mr. Boyce and 
     his investment in a less fortunate human being. By the ripple 
     effect of his generosity, we also benefited. Instead of being 
     raised on a sharecrop farm, we grew up in a home with 
     educated parents, shelves full of books, and with pride in 
     ourselves, My brother George is chairman of the U.S. Postal 
     Rate Commission; Julius is an architect, Lois a music teacher 
     and I'm a writer.
       Mr. R.S.M. Boyce dropped like a blessing into my father's 
     life. What some may see as a chance encounter, I see as the 
     working of a mysterious power for good.
       And I believe that each person blessed with success has an 
     obligation to return part of that blessing. We must all live 
     and act like the man on the train.
                                  ____


                       The Man Who Wouldn't Quit

                            (By Alex Haley)

       In low tones, the dean was explaining to a prospective law 
     student the conduct expected of him. ``We have fixed up a 
     room in the basement for you to stay in between classes. You 
     are not to wander about the campus. Books will be sent down 
     to you from the law library. Bring sandwiches and eat lunch 
     in your room. Always enter and leave the university by the 
     back route I have traced on this map.''
       The dean felt no hostility toward this young man; along 
     with the majority of the faculty and the trustees, he had 
     approved the admission of 24-year-old George Haley to the 
     University of Arkansas School of Law. But it was 1949, and 
     this young Army Air Forces veteran was a Negro. The dean 
     stressed that the key to avoiding violence in this Southern 
     school was maximum isolation.
       George was dismayed at the pattern of life laid out for 
     him. He might have entered Harvard Law School, where he would 
     not have had to live the life of a pariah. Yet he had chosen 
     this! A letter from his father had determined him. During his 
     last semester at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he had opened 
     the letter to read: ``Segregation won't end until we open 
     beachheads wherever it exists. The governor of Arkansas and 
     educational officials have decided upon a quiet tryout of 
     university integration. You have the needed scholastic record 
     and temperament, and I understand that Arkansas has one of 
     the South's best law schools. I can arrange your admission if 
     you accept this challenge.''
       George had great love and respect for his father, a college 
     professor and pioneer in Negro education. He accepted the 
     challenge.

[[Page S3307]]

       The first day of school, he went quickly to his basement 
     room, put his sandwich on the table, and started upstairs for 
     class. He found himself moving through wave upon wave of 
     white faces that all mirrored the same emotions--shock, 
     disbelief, then choking, inarticulate rage. The lecture room 
     was buzzing with conversation, but as he stepped through the 
     door there was silence. He looked for his seat. It was on the 
     side between the other students and the instructor. When the 
     lecture began, he tried desperately to concentrate on what 
     the professor was saying, but the hate in that room seeped 
     into his conscience and obliterated thought.
       On the second day, he was greeted with open taunts and 
     threats: ``You, nigger, what are you doing here?'' ``Hey, 
     nigger, go back to Africa.'' He tried not to hear; to walk 
     with an even pace, with dignity.
       The students devised new ways to harass him. Mornings when 
     he came to his basement room, he found obscene and 
     threatening notes shoved under the door. The trips from the 
     campus back to his rented room in town became a test of 
     nerve. One afternoon, at an intersection, a car full of 
     students slowed down and waved him across. But the moment he 
     stepped in front of the car they gunned the engine, making 
     him scramble back and fall to his hands and knees in the 
     gutter. As the car sped away he heard mocking laughter and 
     the shouted taunt, ``Hey, missing link, why don't you walk on 
     your hind legs?''
       His basement room was near the editorial offices of the Law 
     Review, a publication written and edited by 12 top honor 
     students of the senior class. He had heard of their 
     bitterness that he had to share their toilet. One afternoon 
     his door flew open, and he whirled around to catch in the 
     face a paper bag of urine. After this incident, he was 
     offered a key to the faculty toilet; he refused it. Instead, 
     he denied himself liquids during the day and used no toilet.
       He began to worry that his passive acceptance of degrading 
     treatment might be destroying him, killing something of his 
     manhood. Wouldn't it be better for him to hate back, to fight 
     back? He took his problems to his father and brother in long, 
     agonized letters. His father answered, ``Always remember that 
     they act the way they do out of fear. They are afraid that 
     your presence at the university will somehow hurt it, and 
     thus their own education and chance in life. Be patient with 
     them. Give them a chance to know you and to understand that 
     you are no threat.''
       The day after this letter arrived, George found a noose 
     dangling in the basement room.
       His brother wrote, ``I know it is hard, but try to remember 
     that all our people are with you in thought and prayer.'' 
     George read this with a wry smile. He wondered what his 
     brother would say if he knew how the town Negroes uneasily 
     avoided him. They knew he walked the thin edge of violence, 
     and they didn't want to be near if an explosion occurred. 
     Only a few gave him encouragement. A church deacon proffered 
     a rumpled dollar bill to help with expenses, saying, ``I work 
     nights, son. Walkin' home I see your studyin' light.''
       Despite his ``studyin' light,'' George barely passed the 
     first semester exams. His trouble was that in class he 
     couldn't really think; all his nerve endings were alert to 
     the hate that surrounded him. So the second semester, using a 
     semi-shorthand he had learned in the Army Air Forces, George 
     laboriously recorded every word his professors said. Then at 
     night he blotted out the day's harassments and studied the 
     lectures until he could almost recite them.
       By the end of the year George had lost over 28 pounds, and 
     he went into the examinations exhausted, both physically and 
     emotionally. Somehow he finished them without collapsing, but 
     he had flunked, he thought. He had done his best, and now he 
     could honorably leave. Some other Negro would have to do what 
     he failed to do, some other man stronger and smarter.
       The afternoon the marks were due, he went to his basement 
     room, dropped into the chair, and put his head on the table. 
     There was a knock on his door and he called, ``Come in!'' He 
     could hardly believe what he saw. Into the room filed four of 
     his classmates, smiling at him. One said, ``The marks were 
     just posted and you made the highest A. We thought you'd want 
     to know.'' Then, embarrassed, they backed out of the room.
       For a moment he was stunned, but then a turmoil of emotion 
     flooded through him. Mostly he felt relief that he didn't 
     have to report failure to his father and friends.
       When George Haley returned for his next semester at 
     Arkansas, there was a sharp decrease in the hate mail under 
     his door, and there was grudging respect for his scholastic 
     accomplishments. But still, wherever he went, eyes looked at 
     him as if he were a creature from a zoo.
       One day a letter arrived: ``We are having a `Race-Relations 
     Sunday' and would enjoy having you join our discussion.'' It 
     was signed by the secretary of the Westminster Presbyterian 
     Student Foundation. His first reaction was anger. They wanted 
     to discuss, did they? Where had all these do-gooders been all 
     the time he'd been going through hell? Bitterly he tore up 
     the invitation and threw it in the wastebasket. But that 
     night he tossed restlessly. At last he got out of bed and 
     wrote an acceptance.
       At the church, he was met by a group of young men and 
     women. There were the too-hasty handclasps and the too-bright 
     smiles. At last the chairman stood up to introduce George. He 
     said, ``We hope that Mr. Haley will tell us what we can do as 
     a Christian body.''
       George got to his feet and moved stonily to the podium. 
     Those introductory words released something of a maelstrom of 
     emotions. He forgot his carefully prepared speech. ``What can 
     you do?'' he blurted out. ``You can speak to me!''
       Suddenly, all that had been dammed up came pouring out. He 
     told them what it was like to be treated like an enemy in 
     your own country; what it did to the spirit to be hounded for 
     no crime save that of skin color; what it did to the soul to 
     begin to believe that Christ's teachings had no validity in 
     this world. ``I've begun to hate,'' he confessed. ``I've 
     drawn on every spiritual resource I have to fight off this 
     hatred, but I'm failing.'' His eyes flooded with tears of 
     anger, then of shame. He groped for his chair.
       The silence vanished in a roar of applause and cheers. When 
     the chairman's gavel finally restored order, George was 
     unanimously voted a member of the group. Thereafter he spent 
     a part of each weekend at Westminster House, enjoying the 
     simple pleasure of human companionship.
       A slight thaw also began to take place at the university. 
     George's classmates gingerly began moments of shoptalk with 
     him, discussing cases. One day he overheard a group 
     discussing a legal point, and one of them said, ``Let's go 
     down and ask Haley in the Noose Room.'' He knew only a moment 
     of indignation--then he smiled! It was an important change.
       Toward the end of his second year a senior asked him, with 
     elaborate casualness, why he didn't write some articles for 
     the Law Review. It was traditional that only the best 
     students received such invitations, and he felt himself 
     flushing with pride.
       It was only after he returned to school for the third and 
     final year that he decided to go to the cafeteria. He didn't 
     really want to go. In this last year he longed to relax, to 
     let down his guard. But he was in this school for more than 
     an education.
       He went and stood in the cafeteria line. The other students 
     moved away from him in both directions so that he moved in 
     his own private air space. His tray was almost loaded when 
     three hulking students ahead shouted, ``Want to eat with us, 
     nigger?''
       They jostled him, knocking his tray to the floor with a 
     clatter of breaking dishes. As George stooped to retrieve it, 
     his eyes blazed up at his tormentors and for the first time 
     he shouted back. ``You're adults!'' he said. ``Grow up!'' 
     They shrank from him in mock terror.
       Shaking, George replaced the dumped food and made his way 
     over to a vacant table. He bent his head over the crockery. 
     Suddenly, a balding student stopped beside him with his tray 
     and drawled, ``My name is Miller Williams. Mind if I sit 
     here?'' George nodded. Now the two of them were the center of 
     all eyes. Now the taunts were directed at the white student, 
     the words ``nigger lover.''
       Miller Williams was hardly that. ``I was born in Hoxie, 
     Arkansas,'' he said, ``and I have spent all my life in the 
     South. But what's happening here just isn't right, and I'm 
     taking my stand with you.''
       Later that day, Williams brought several students to 
     George's room for a bull session, and they laid it on the 
     line. ``Don't all you niggers carry knives?'' George emptied 
     his pockets, no knife. ``How often do you bathe?'' Every day, 
     George told him. ``Don't most of you lust after white 
     girls?'' George showed him snapshots of a pretty Negro girl 
     he was dating in his hometown.
       Following this session, he wrote his brother: ``Improving 
     race relations is at least 50 percent a matter of simple 
     communication. Now that I'm able to talk to a few whites, I 
     realize what terrible beliefs cause that prejudice. I can see 
     the emotional struggle they are going through just to see me 
     as an equal human being.''
       Increasingly the last year became a time of triumph, not 
     only for George but for white students who were able to 
     discard their own preconceptions. When a student sidled up to 
     him and said, ``I wrote you a letter I'm sorry for,'' George 
     stuck out his hand and the student shook it. When another 
     silently offered him a cigarette, George, who didn't smoke, 
     puffed away, knowing it was far more than a gesture.
       He was named to the Law Review staff, and his writing won 
     an award from the Arkansas Law Review Corp. His winning paper 
     represented the university in a national competition. The 
     faculty chose him as a moot-court defense attorney, and his 
     Law Review colleagues picked him as comments editor--the man 
     entrusted with the selection of articles to print.
       School was drawing to a close, and he felt a deep 
     satisfaction in having accomplished most of his goals. But 
     then the old specter rose again. Each year, distinguished 
     alumni returned for a faculty banquet to salute the Law 
     Review staff. With a sinking feeling, George dreaded what 
     would happen. And that evening when George entered the hotel 
     banquet hall, the reaction was just what he feared. The 
     moment the alumni saw him, a pall fell on the room.
       George felt sick. The food passed his lips untasted. It 
     came time for speeches. The law school dean, Robert A. 
     Leflar, welcomed the alumni and introduced the student 
     editors, one at a time. There seemed an eternity of names, 
     and George felt a frozen smile on his face.
       Dean Leflar said, ``The next young man demands, and 
     receives, as much if not more respect than any other person 
     in our law school.''

[[Page S3308]]

       Eleven chairs scraped back, and 11 men stood up. They were 
     the Law Review editors, and they were looking at George and 
     applauding vigorously. Then the faculty stood up and added 
     cheers to the applause. Finally the old grads got up, the 
     judges, lawyers and politicians from the Deep South, and the 
     ovation became thunderous. ``Speech! Speech!'' they shouted. 
     George Haley pushed himself to his feet. He could say no word 
     for he was unashamedly crying. But that was kind of a speech 
     too.
       Today, ten years later, George is a respected lawyer in 
     Kansas City, Kansas. He has been deputy city attorney since 
     1955. He is a steward in his church, has helped found a 
     number of Negro business firms, and is vice president of the 
     state Young Republicans.
       Dozens of old schoolmates are now George's close friends, 
     but perhaps the most touching acceptance of him as a man came 
     a few years ago when he received a telephone call from Miller 
     Williams, who had sat with him in the cafeteria. Williams, 
     now an instructor of English at Louisiana State University, 
     called to announce the birth of a daughter. ``Lucy and I were 
     wondering,'' he said, ``whether you'd care to be her 
     godfather?''
       This simple request made forever real the love and respect 
     between two people. George knew that the long struggle and 
     pain had been worthwhile. He knew, too, that his father had 
     been right in saying, ``Be patient with them. Give them a 
     chance to know you.''
       I know it too. For I am George's brother.

                          ____________________