[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 169 (Tuesday, September 29, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5933-S5934]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING REV. LEON FINNEY, JR.

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on July 17, America lost two giants of 
justice: Congressman John Lewis and the Reverend C.T. Vivian. Sixty 
years ago, John Lewis was the youngest member of Dr. Martin Luther 
King's inner circle, and C.T. Vivian was Dr. King's field marshal, 
organizing support for the civil rights movement throughout America. In 
1966, when Martin Luther King moved to Chicago to help break the grip 
of slumlords on mostly poor communities of color, C.T. Vivian came with 
him.
  Earlier this month, we lost another civil rights legend, a man who 
remained in Chicago after Dr. King and Rev. Vivian left and who 
continued the fight for the next 60 years for racial, social, and 
economic justice for people and communities of color in Chicago.
  The Rev. Leon Finney, Jr., was laid to rest this past weekend 
following his home going service at the church he pastored for the last 
20 years, the Metropolitan Apostolic Church in Bronzeville. Among those 
paying tribute to Rev. Finney at his home going were Chicago Mayor Lori 
Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. They are 
among more than two generations of Chicago leaders whose careers in 
public service Rev. Finney helped to nurture. Another public servant 
whose work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago was 
was inspired in part by Rev. Finney couldn't attend the service but 
paid his respects in a letter read by Rev. Finney's granddaughter.
  ``Doc was always there for us,'' the letter read. It was signed: 
``Barack Obama.'' In the 1960s, after Dr. King and Rev. Vivian had left 
Chicago, Leon Finney stayed. He understood that progress is a long 
march. Systemic racism and deep, generational poverty can't be 
eliminated in a year or two. Real change, real progress requires 
sustained commitment and effort. It requires strategy, not just 
slogans. Above all, Rev. Finney understood that real progress can't be 
delivered from outside or imposed from above. It has to come from the 
people who live in a community. He believed in power of grassroots 
democracy to transform individual lives and whole communities.
  Leon Finney was a Chicagoan by choice, not birth. He was born 82 
years ago in Louise, MS., the eldest of six children. His father, Leon 
Sr., moved the family north to Chicago when his children were young, 
part of the Great Migration. In 1940, his dad opened his first 
restaurant, Leon's Bar-B-Q, in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. In its 
heyday, Leon's had four locations throughout the South Side. Leon Sr. 
was Chicago's ``Bar-B-Q King.''
  In the early 1960s, Leon Jr. enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He 
served as a military police officer and criminal investigator. After 
the Marines, he returned to Chicago and founded Christ Apostolic Church 
in Woodlawn. He served as its pastor for two decades, until that church 
merged with Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church--``The Met''--where 
he served as senior pastor.
  As his longtime friend and fellow activist, Father Michael Pfleger 
said: Rev. Finney was ``one of the few pastors who still understood 
that just the DNA of the gospel.'' It wasn't enough to preach about 
justice on Sunday mornings. Rev. Finney believed that you needed to 
work for justice every day.
  In 1964 Rev. Finney joined The Woodlawn Organization, or TWO, a 
grassroots group founded by the legendary organizer Saul Alinsky. He 
joined forces with another South Side civil rights legend, Bishop 
Arthur Brazier, who had marched with Dr. King in Chicago. In 1967, he 
became TWO's executive director. In 1969, TWO created a nonprofit 
development organization, WCDC--the Woodlawn Community Development 
Corporation--and named Rev. Finney as its president.
  TWO organized Woodlawn residents to stand up to absentee slumlords, 
who owned much of the housing in Woodlawn and other low-income 
neighborhoods on the South and West sides. It pushed back against plans 
by the University of Chicago to expand its campus south, into Woodlawn, 
plans that would have driven out longtime Woodlawn residents and 
businesses. The group also fought against ``substandard, segregated 
housing, high unemployment, poor schools, inadequate public services, 
community health concerns and other persistent social problems.''
  Over the years, WCDC helped attract more than $300 million in 
commercial and residential development in ``uninvestable'' communities. 
The organization developed nearly 1,700 apartments and homes for low- 
and moderate-income families, mostly in Woodlawn but throughout the 
South Side. It managed 9,000 rental apartments in Chicago and Gary, IN. 
It employed 400 Black men and women, as many or more than almost any 
other employer in Chicago except for government. Many of its early 
victories were achieved before the creation of real estate investment 
trusts, affordable housing tax credits, enterprise zones, and other 
government incentive programs to attract capital to low-income and 
minority neighborhoods. TWO and WCDC became national models for 
community investment a revitalization.
  Rev. Finney forged alliances with elected leaders because he wanted 
to have a seat at the table when the interests of his community were 
being decided. He was appointed to powerful government boards, 
including the Chicago Housing Authority, the Chicago Plan Commission, 
the Monitoring Commission for School Desegregation for Chicago Public 
Schools, and Chicago State University.
  In 1993, he joined the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary on 
the University of Chicago campus. As a professor of African American 
Leadership Studies and executive director of the seminary's African 
American Leadership Partnership, he helped train scores of new 
ministers in the work of the social gospel.
  He was not without fault. As he aged and the real estate industry 
became increasingly complex, WCDC sometimes struggled to pace with the 
changes and missteps occurred. But despite the controversy, the imprint 
that Rev. Finney left on the South Side of Chicago and the good he 
achieved is profound.
  In recent years, he suffered a series of health setbacks, but he 
never stopped working for justice. At his funeral, a community 
developer who Rev. Finney helped train recalled a recent conversation 
they had about today's new movement for racial reckoning.
  ``What's the strategy going forward? Is a voter registrar marching 
with you

[[Page S5934]]

next time?'' he asked. Like the marine he was, he remained focused and 
disciplined to the end.
  He was proud and optimistic that a part of Jackson Park would be home 
to the new Obama Presidential Library. Not only would the library bring 
new investment and opportunities to the South Side, it would remind the 
young people, especially the Black and Brown children, who live there 
about what is possible for them.
  In a 2015 column, Rev. Finney wrote: ``The young among us today, many 
of them, will grow up believing anyone can become president, regardless 
of race. But some of us can remember when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 
in Brown vs. Board of Education that separate was not equal; some are 
old enough to have marched on Washington. Those events signaled the end 
of legal segregation in this country. But we never dreamed we would see 
a man of African heritage elected president--not in our lifetimes.'' 
The South Side, the community that was home to Harold Washington, 
Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson, and many other pioneers for racial 
justice, was the right home, he said, for the President Obama's 
library.
  Loretta and I offer our condolences to Rev. Finney's many friends, 
colleagues, students, and especially to his family: his son Leon III, 
his daughter Kristian Finney-Cooke, his son-in-law Dr. Gerald Cooke, 
and his three grandchildren.
  Several years ago, McCormick Theological Seminary held a gathering to 
honor Rev. Finney. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the program 
he had founded to train African-American ministers. Graduates of the 
program, including many community leaders, spoke of the profound 
influence Rev. Finney had had on their lives. When it came time for him 
to speak, Rev. Finney implored them to always remember to put the 
mission of the Gospel before their own egos. He recited one of his 
favorite Bible passages; the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, verse 18: ``The 
Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim 
good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the 
prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed 
free.''
  Leon Finney remained true to his mission. Martin Luther King and C.T. 
Vivian helped sketch a vision for a new Chicago, but Leon Finney worked 
for more than 50 years to make that better, fairer Chicago a reality. 
The good he achieved will benefit our city, our State, and our Nation 
for years to come.

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