[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 121 (Monday, July 12, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S4819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Remembering Elsie Steward Young

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, last week, Ohio and our Nation lost a 
champion for civil rights, Miss Elsie Steward Young of Highland County, 
a conservative, rural county in Southwest Ohio.
  Miss Elsie, as everyone called her, had just celebrated her 105th 
birthday. She is a legend in Southwest Ohio. Her courage, her 
leadership made a difference for children not only in her community but 
all over the country.
  In 1954, after the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Board 
of Education decision and ordered an end to segregation in American 
schools, the two all-White primary schools in Hillsboro--again, a small 
town, Highland County, southwest of Columbus--refused to integrate. The 
district continued to send Black students to a single all-Black school 
which was woefully underfunded.
  I remember the stories my mother would tell me of growing up in 
Mansfield, GA. She said she knew and she told me--when busing became 
such a controversy in the 1960s and 1970s, she told me that she knew 
all about busing.
  In the South, when she grew up in the twenties and thirties, they 
would bus Black students past the newer, better kept White schools to 
the segregated Black schools that were falling apart. No criticism of 
``forced busing'' in those days.
  That was essentially what was going on in Hillsboro, OH, and Elsie 
Steward Young wouldn't stand for it.
  She and a group of mothers--this is in the 1950s--took matters into 
their own hands. They became the Marching Mothers of Hillsboro. Every 
single day for two long years, they marched for miles to the town's 
all-White primary school; every day they were sent home.
  They carried on. Eventually, the community and the State and the 
country noticed. They joined with the NAACP to file a lawsuit against 
the Hillsboro board of education. It made it all the way to the Supreme 
Court, and they won.
  Because of Miss Elsie and her fellow mothers' advocacy, the Court 
ordered the schools to integrate and paved the way for integration in 
other northern cities.
  Her activism showed us why ordinary students and ordinary citizens--
what they can achieve when they join together to fight for justice.
  It is a reminder of how far we have come, how much work we have to do 
to achieve justice and opportunity for all children in our country.
  Three years ago, Elsie Steward Young was inducted into the Ohio Civil 
Rights Hall of Fame. That fall, we honored the Marching Mothers of 
Hillsboro and the children--of course, now adults--who marched. We 
honored them with our office's Canary Award at our annual Ohio Women's 
Conference.
  Then-Senator Kamala Harris, now the Vice President, was supposed to 
speak. We were going to present Miss Elsie with the award. She was 
already past 100 at that point. We both had to stay in Washington at 
the last minute because of Supreme Court votes.
  So many Ohioans at that conference told me later that, frankly, I am 
not sure that the Vice President--the future Vice President and I were 
missed that much, not with Miss Elsie there. She not only filled the 
void, she provided so much energy with her forceful, inspiring words; 
and during that conference she was 102.
  Throughout the conference, people lined up to get pictures with her. 
When the video played depicting the bravery and determination of the 
marchers and when Miss Elsie spoke accepting the award, of course, 
there was hardly a dry eye in the audience.
  She talked about how she and other mothers only did what any mother 
would do for her children.
  So many Ohioans will miss Miss Elsie Steward Young. Our thoughts are 
with her three surviving daughters, her two surviving sons, and, get 
this, her 36 grandchildren.
  We know her legacy lives on through her success, through her 
victories, through her fight for justice, through her families, through 
the future generations of young people whom she inspired to stand 
against justice.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Miss Elsie Steward Young, 
Ohioan mother, determined champion for civil rights