[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 59 (Thursday, April 4, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S2267]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               REMEMBERING HARRIS LLEWELLYN WOFFORD, JR.

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, today I wish to remember and pay tribute to 
former Senator Harris Llewellyn Wofford, Jr. and his life of dedicated 
service to our country and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
  Harris lived a life of service, committed to advancing civil rights 
and ending injustice. Early in his career, Harris went to India to 
study nonviolence and the teachings of Gandhi. The lessons he learned 
during that time would become indispensable as Harris got to know Dr. 
Martin Luther King, Jr., and became involved in the civil rights 
movement, helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil 
rights legislation since reconstruction.
  When John F. Kennedy was running for President in 1960, Harris was an 
adviser on his campaign. Days before the election, Dr. King was 
unjustly imprisoned, and Wofford urged Kennedy and his team to call 
Coretta Scott King to comfort her and demonstrate his commitments to 
civil rights. Once Kennedy was elected, Harris Wofford served as 
Special Assistant to the President for Civil Rights and chairman of the 
Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights. He urged the President and Attorney 
General Robert F. Kennedy to pursue civil rights legislation. Wofford 
would join Martin Luther King and others in the Selma to Montgomery 
Civil Rights marches in 1965 in support of voting rights for African-
Americans.
  While serving in the Kennedy administration, Wofford worked with R. 
Sargent Shriver on the creation of the Peace Corps, eventually leaving 
the White House to serve as the Peace Corps' special representative to 
Africa and director of operations in Ethiopia, as well as associate 
director. He would also play a role in the creation of Volunteers in 
Service to America, a domestic version of the Peace Corps.
  In 1991, when former Pennsylvania Senator H. John Heinz was killed in 
a plane crash, my father, Governor Robert P. Casey, turned to Harris 
Wofford to fill the vacancy. Harris went on to win a special election 
and served until 1994 when he narrowly lost reelection. While in 
office, he worked to pass the National and Community Service Act, 
creating AmeriCorps, the Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. 
Harris would go on to serve as the head of AmeriCorps.
  If one tried to sum up Harris Wofford's life in one word, it would be 
service. He truly believed that through service every individual could 
contribute to the betterment of his or her community, State, country, 
and the world. Harris Wofford's friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., said 
``everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.'' Today we honor 
Harris Wofford's life of service which will continue to inspire 
Americans to serve one another and our Nation.

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