[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 138 (Tuesday, August 4, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E728]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      IN RECOGNITION OF THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF BRUCE WATKINS, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EMANUEL CLEAVER

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, August 4, 2020

  Mr. CLEAVER. Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise 
today to honor the life and legacy of Mr. Bruce Watkins, Jr. Mr. 
Watkins spent his days on Earth fighting to preserve, honor, and 
protect the stories of the African Americans who helped build and grow 
Kansas City, living a life that deserves both recognition and 
reflection.
  Mr. Watkins was born in the time of Emmett Till and Rosa Parks, into 
a family with a profound and unwavering commitment to advancing the 
cause of civil rights in Kansas City. His father was both a co-founder 
and the second president of Freedom, Incorporated, Kansas City's local, 
Black political organization, as well as the first African American 
elected to the City Council of Kansas City. In 1966, his father was 
elected a Circuit Court Clerk, making him the first Black person 
elected to Jackson County government, and would later become the first 
African American to nearly win a KC mayoral race. As a former city 
council member and Kansas City's first African American Mayor, I know 
that the path I walk was planned, plowed, and paved by Bruce Watkins, 
Sr. It has been an honor to watch Bruce Watkins, Jr. valiantly carry 
his father's mission into the 21st century.
  Mr. Watkins grew up alongside the African American Civil Rights 
Movement, went to Southeast High School, and then studied at University 
of Nevada-Las Vegas' College of Business, where he graduated in 1977 
with a Bachelor of Science in Human Resources Management and Services. 
Thirteen years later, he would return to school to earn his Associate 
degree at Kansas City Kansas Community College's School of Mortuary 
Science, before starting his career as a funeral director.
  Mr. Watkins was a keeper of stories. As a funeral director at the 
Watkins Brothers Memorial Chapel, Mr. Watkins spent thirty-one years 
performing the unglamorous but noble work of honoring our community's 
dead and supporting their grieving families. As a leading member of the 
Watkins Foundation, he led the campaign to have Kansas City's East 
Patrol Crime Lab named after prominent civil rights leader Leon Jordon, 
forty-five years after his assassination. As a member of Freedom, 
Incorporated, Mr. Watkins aided in the group's mission to register 
African American voters in Kansas City, elect them to local office, and 
ensure that the voices of Black Kansas Citians were heard within the 
halls of government. And as eminent Kansas City leaders, he and his 
cousin Warren Watkins, Jr. fought to gain recognition for the slaves 
likely buried at the site of the City's new airport. Mr. Watkins was 
integral to that continued mission to make sure that those we welcome 
to our magnificent city also know of its painful past, etching a 
symbolic headstone of history for his ancestors whose graves remain 
largely unmarked.
  I was proud to call Mr. Watkins a dear friend and am humbled not only 
by his life of service but also by the task of paying tribute to it. On 
this day, I wonder how to properly honor someone who spent his whole 
life honoring others--how one can do justice to the story of a lifelong 
storyteller. Perhaps, the answer lies in not only telling Mr. Watkins' 
story but also the stories he was passionate about preserving. When we 
in the Missouri 5th drive on Bruce R. Watkins Memorial Drive or pass by 
the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Center--when we look upon the Spirit of 
Freedom Fountain or drive by the Green Duck Lounge--when we tell the 
stories of Fred Curls or Lucile Bluford or Leon Jordon--we honor the 
life and work of Bruce Watkins, Jr. May God allow him to continue that 
work in the company of that other great storyteller, who told us all of 
the Sower, the Weeds, and the Mustard Seed. I think they'll get along 
well.
  As the keeper of a history he helped make, Mr. Watkins continued a 
four-generation story of a family and a city that loved and challenged 
one another. Madam Speaker, please join me in honoring the life of 
Bruce Watkins, Jr. Let us all seek to emulate his example by preserving 
the stories that tell us who we are as a people and a nation and let 
one of those stories be his.