[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7956-7957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   TRIBUTE TO ADOLPH REED, SR., 1921-2003, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF 
  ARKANSAS, PINE BLUFF; SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY, BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA; 
                  UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I was indeed fortunate as a 
teenager to attend the Arkansas Mechanical and Normal College, which is 
now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. While this was one of the 
historically black colleges and universities, it did not have a great 
deal in the way of material supplies and resources. However, it had 
some of the most profound educators and education administrators this 
country has ever known.
  I could cite any number of them, but today I will mention three and 
highlight one. Prexy, President Lawrence A. Davis, Sr., had no peer as 
an administrator and was beloved by generations of individuals who are 
connected to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
  Mr. Ray Russell, chairman of the History Department, was one of the 
most exciting professors that I have ever known. I was a history major, 
and he was my friend, mentor, and a father figure.
  However, the man that I would highlight and the man whose thinking 
helped to shape my own passion for democratic principles and social 
activism, Professor Adolph Reed, Sr., was my political science 
professor. I remember Mr. Reed so well, as his other students have 
described him, slender, suave, in constant motion, talking incessantly, 
keeping us in rapt attention as he waxed eloquently about Locke, 
Rousseau, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Daisy 
Bates, Martin Luther King, and the nameless sharecroppers, common, 
ordinary people, everyday people who would march, demonstrate, picket, 
boycott, and do whatever they could to try and obtain justice.
  Professor Reed, like so many others of his generation, migrated from 
Arkansas to Chicago, where he worked as a railroad dining car waiter 
and sat in on classes at the University of Chicago. His experiences in 
the hustle and bustle in the predominantly black South Side of Chicago 
remained a central part of his being as he continued on the path to 
greatness.
  He was drafted into the Army, was part of the Normandy invasion, and 
saw action at the Battle of the Bulge. He was involved in protests by 
black troops in Charleston, South Carolina, and in Manchester, England. 
He often remarked about the contradiction of having been sent to fight 
the racist Nazis in a racially segregated United States Army.
  After the war, Professor Reed, like many other veterans, especially 
African American males who had never before had the opportunity to 
attend college in large numbers, enrolled at Fiske University in 
Nashville, Tennessee. He pursued postgraduate studies at New York 
University and American University.
  Mr. Reed taught at Arkansas A.M. and N. College, where he was my 
instructor. He then moved on to Southern University, where he resigned 
as the result of a clash with the university's president over his 
expulsion of student protestors who were demonstrating for civil 
rights, equal opportunity, and an end to segregation. He held visiting 
professorships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and 
the University of California at San Diego.
  At Arkansas A.M. and N., we knew Mr. Reed was spellbinding, but we 
did not know that while at Fiske he had been editor of an independent 
radical newspaper called ``Give Me a Name,'' or that during the 1940s 
had been active in the American Labor Party. In 1948, he was a delegate 
to the Progressive Party convention that launched Henry Wallace's 
Presidential campaign.
  We did not know that he had been at Peekskill, New York, in 1949 to 
show support for our hero, Paul Robeson; or that he had been a reporter 
for the New York Compass.
  After getting to know Dr. Adolph Reed, Jr., a well-known college 
professor who teaches political science at the New School for Social 
Research in New York City, and to know that Mr. Reed's grandson, Toure 
F. Reed is a history professor at Illinois State University in 
Bloomington, Illinois, it reinforces for me the kind of legacy that he 
left.
  Mr. Reed taught at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville from 
1971 to 1994, when he retired with the title ``professor emeritus.''
  Madam Speaker, it is good to have known one who lived what he taught, 
who practiced what he preached, who understood that you cannot lead 
where you are unwilling to go, and that you cannot teach what you do 
not know.
  I want to end this with Dr. Reed, Jr.'s, characterization of his 
father. ``Professor Reed as a political scientist remained convinced 
that both major political parties are too beholden to corporate 
interests, which he frequently described as the basis for the perverted 
priorities of American politics.''
  In recent years, he became an active supporter of the New Labor 
Party, created in 1996, and its project of building a politics in this 
country based on a working-class economic agenda. He was a man for many 
seasons, and oftentimes thought of as a man before his time.
  I am proud to have known him, and appreciate the tremendous 
contribution that he made to all of America.
  Madam Speaker, it is so good to have known one who lived what he 
taught, who practiced what he preached, who understood that you cannot 
lead where you are unwilling to go and that you cannot teach what you 
do not know.
  I want to end this with Dr. Adolph Reed Jr.'s characterization of his 
father. Professor Reed as a political scientist:

       . . . remained convinced that both major political parties 
     are too beholden to corporate interests, which he frequently 
     described as the basis for the ``perverted priorities'' of 
     American politics. In recent years, he became an active 
     supporter of the New Labor Party, created in 1996, and its 
     project of building a politics in this country based on a 
     working class economic agenda that cuts across other 
     potential social divisions. All his life he lamented what he 
     perceived as the ruling class's success in inducing too many 
     poor and working people to identify the wrong enemies.

  He stressed the roles of the news media, education system and 
organized religion in perpetuating that situation:

       These convictions shaped his approach to intellectual and 
     political life. He was widely known among colleagues and in 
     the political science profession as a person of uncommon 
     honesty and integrity, a witty and engaging raconteur, big 
     ban jazz aficionado, a biting critic and a generous friend. 
     Although he never shied away from expressing intellectual and 
     political disagreements, he refused to take differences 
     personally and could maintain friendships with those with who 
     he differed sharply. His teaching philosophy was simply to 
     encourage students to think independently.

  Professor Reed was an important force in the development of a 
generation of Black Political scientists and a prominent voice in the 
organization throughout its formative years. He was also a founding 
member of the American Political Science Association's Caucus for a New 
Political Science.
  When I learned that Mr. Reed and his family had lived in Dumas, 
Eudora and Reed, Arkansas, his being became even more meaningful

[[Page 7957]]

to me, given the fact that this is the largely rural, impoverished area 
where I grew up. This has provided me with even more affinity for this 
great scholar and tremendous teacher.
  Adolph Reed Sr. 1921-2003, a man with exceptional insight, common 
experiences, menial work, a soldier, activist, uncompromising 
philosopher, served on State Constitution Committees in Arkansas and 
Louisiana, inspiration to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., acknowledged 
prominently in Race and Democracy, a book by Adam Fairclough depicting 
the Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana from 1915 to 1972, heralded by 
activists like Stokley Carmichael, featured in the Black Press for 
being at the core of student unrest and activism on black college 
campuses, intellectual giant. Mr. Reed, when your family and friends 
gather in Fayetteville, Arkansas to pay tribute, please know that there 
are thousands of us across the country who are there in spirit and of 
course, you will always be with us. ``Sante Sana'' ``The Struggle will 
Continue.''

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