Augustus F. “Gus” Hawkins’s political career spanned 56
years of public service in the California assembly and the
U.S. House of Representatives. Elected to the U.S. House
in November 1962 as the first Black Representative from
west of the Mississippi River, Hawkins led countless efforts
to improve the economic and educational opportunities of
low-income and working-class Americans and to secure and
expand the legislative victories of the civil rights movement.
Known by colleagues as the “Silent Warrior,” Hawkins
worked effectively behind the scenes to accomplish his
legislative goals. “The leadership belongs not to the loudest,
not to those who beat the drums or blow the trumpets,”
Hawkins said, “but to those who day in and day out, in all
seasons, work for the practical realization of a better world—
those who have the stamina to persist and remain dedicated.”1
Augustus Freeman Hawkins was born in Shreveport,
Louisiana, on August 31, 1907. The youngest of five
children, he moved to Los Angeles, California, with his
parents, Nyanza, a pharmacist and business owner, and
Hattie Hawkins, a homemaker, and his siblings in the early
1920s. After graduating from Los Angeles’s Jefferson High
School in 1926, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics
from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1931.
Although he planned to study civil engineering in graduate
school, Hawkins’s lack of financial support, exacerbated by
the Great Depression, forced him to alter his career path.
He opened a real estate company with his brother Edward
and took classes at the University of Southern California’s
Institute of Government. Hawkins and a group of likeminded
friends from college organized an insurgent political
club in opposition to local political leaders including Frank
Roberts, a Black Republican and 16-year veteran of the
California assembly who controlled their district. In 1935,
Hawkins, who had accused Roberts of staying in office too
long, defeated the incumbent to win a spot in the California
state assembly. While serving in the state assembly, Hawkins
married Pegga Adeline Smith on August 28, 1945. After she
died in 1966, he married Elsie Taylor on June 30, 1977.2
As a member of the California assembly from 1935 to
1963, Hawkins compiled a substantial legislative record
that centered on the interests of his predominantly African-
American and Latino Los Angeles district. In addition to
chairing the joint legislative organization committee, he
introduced a fair housing act, a fair employment practices
act, legislation for low-cost housing and disability insurance,
and provisions to make housekeepers eligible for workmen’s compensation. In 1959, Hawkins lost a bid to become assembly speaker—widely considered the second-mostpowerful
elected office in the state behind the governor—to
Ralph M. Brown. Two years later, Brown named Hawkins
chair of the influential rules committee.3
In 1962, Hawkins entered the Democratic primary to
represent a newly created majority-Black congressional
district encompassing central Los Angeles. Looking back on
his decision to run, Hawkins remembered thinking, “I felt
federal policies, including civil rights, just meant so much.”
With an established legislative record and the endorsement
of President John F. Kennedy, Hawkins easily defeated his
three primary opponents with more than 50 percent of the
vote. He won the general election by a landslide, capturing
85 percent of the vote against an African-American
attorney, Republican Herman Smith, to earn a spot in the
88th Congress (1963–1965). After the election, Hawkins
remarked, “It’s like shifting gears—from the oldest man in
the Assembly in years of service to a freshman in Congress.”
Even though the California state legislature reapportioned
the Los Angeles-area congressional district four times after
Hawkins’s initial election, it remained predominantly
African American and Latino and consistently supported
Hawkins, who won each of his general elections by more
than 80 percent of the vote.4
During his first term in Congress, Hawkins sat on
the Education and Labor Committee, which was chaired
by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York. Hawkins
eventually rose to chair of the committee himself, a position
he held from the second session of the 98th Congress
(1983–1985) until his retirement at the end of the 101st
Congress (1989–1991). He also served on the House
Administration Committee from the 91st through the 98th
Congress (1969–1985), serving as chair for the final two
terms. Hawkins also chaired the Joint Committee on the
Library during the 97th Congress (1981–1983) and the
Joint Committee on Printing during the 96th and 98th
Congresses (1979–1981; 1983–1985). He left all three
panels when he assumed the chair of the Education and
Labor Committee. The California Representative also served
on the Joint Economic Committee from the 97th Congress
to the 101st Congress (1981–1991).
In August 1965, in just his second term, Hawkins was
thrust into the political spotlight when widespread looting,
arson, and violence erupted in his district, sparked by an
arrest of a Black man for drunk driving that resulted in a
confrontation with police in Watts, an underserved and
largely segregated Los Angeles neighborhood. Hawkins
challenged his fellow lawmakers to help his constituents,
saying, “The trouble is that nothing has ever been done to
solve the long-range underlying problems.” While he did
not condone the civil violence, he believed it expressed a
sense of desperation, partially due to the absence of long-promised
federal antipoverty funds.5
From the beginning of his career on the Hill, Hawkins
worked to secure civil rights legislation. As a member of
the General Subcommittee on Labor of the Committee
on Education and Labor, Hawkins influenced the writing
and passage of a nationwide equal employment law and
the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC)—a federal agency to prevent
discrimination in the workplace—in Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. The landmark act also prohibited
discrimination based on race, color, ethnicity, or religion
in public accommodations and in municipal, state, and
federal services. In 1963, Hawkins sponsored an equal
employment bill and worked closely with James Roosevelt
of California—chair of the General Subcommittee on Labor
who had also introduced an equal employment bill—to
shepherd legislation through the committee and into the
Civil Rights Act. Hawkins believed targeting discrimination
in the workforce was essential to the advancement of civil
rights. Although pleased with the passage of the legislation,
he called the civil rights bill “only a beginning.” He added,
“It is incomplete and inadequate; but it represents a step
forward.” In 1964, following the passage of the Civil Rights
Act, he toured the South with Representatives Phillip
Burton of California, William Donlon “Don” Edwards
of California, and William Fitts Ryan of New York to
champion African-American voter registration and to
observe discrimination firsthand. Praising the civil rights
activists who risked their lives to fight oppression, Hawkins
recalled: “Being congressmen didn’t exempt us from the
constant terror felt by anyone challenging established racial
practices.” Later in the decade, Hawkins took the lead in
advocating for improvements to the equal employment law.
Beginning in 1966, Hawkins introduced legislation to give
the EEOC cease-and-desist powers to compel offending
employers to cooperate. In 1972, President Richard M.
Nixon signed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, a
compromise bill that allowed the EEOC to sue employers in
federal court.6
As a Member of the Education and Labor Committee
Hawkins was heavily involved in the writing of much of
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society legislation,
but he found fault with the administration’s foreign policy
in Southeast Asia. In 1969, Hawkins argued the Vietnam
War was a “mistake in our foreign policy,” caused in part by
“believing we can impose our way of life on other people.”
Hawkins’s criticism of the war escalated throughout the
1960s and continued into the Nixon administration.
Serving on a select committee to provide specialized
information to the House about U.S. involvement in
Vietnam, Hawkins and 11 congressional colleagues set off
on a fact-finding mission to Southeast Asia in June 1970.
During the trip, Hawkins and Democratic Representative
William Robert Anderson of Tennessee toured a South
Vietnamese prison for civilians and reported witnessing
prisoners, men, women, and children locked in small
stone or cement rooms, known as “Tiger Cages,” and
suffering from extreme malnutrition. They drafted a House
Resolution urging Congress to “condemn the cruel and
inhumane treatment” of prisoners in South Vietnam. The
two Representatives also pressured President Nixon to send
an independent task force to investigate the prison and
“prevent further degradation and death.”7
In Congress, Hawkins also worked to overturn historic
injustices. In 1972, he succeeded in obtaining an honorable
discharge for 167 Black soldiers who were dismissed from
the 25th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army after being
falsely accused of a public disturbance in Brownsville, Texas,
in 1906. A year later, he proposed legislation to compensate
the surviving members of the 25th Infantry Regiment and
their descendants for their loss of pension and as a reward
for their unjust discharge from the military. “Great harm
has been done to these men and their families —much of it
irreparable,” Hawkins explained in a hearing. “Yet, money
compensation will, at least in part, do some concrete justice
in this matter.”8
Throughout his career, Hawkins was determined
to use his position as a Member of Congress to curb
unemployment in the United States. In 1975, an
economic downturn caused unemployment to soar to 8.5
percent—the highest rate in a generation. The joblessness
rate for non-Whites—nearly 14 percent—was especially
devastating to African Americans. From 1974 to 1978,
Hawkins worked with Senator (and former Vice President)
Hubert H. Humphrey Jr. of Minnesota to draft legislation
making the federal government responsible for maintaining
a low unemployment rate. Hawkins first introduced full
employment legislation in 1974, that would have created
federal programs to provide “to every adult American,”
he explained, “the fundamental human right to useful
employment at fair rates of compensation.” During four
years of deliberation and negotiation, Hawkins’s ambitious
legislation was reshaped and pared back. Introduced in
1976, the ultimately successful full employment legislation
took two years until passage. On the House Floor,
Hawkins rebuked his colleagues for allowing the measure
to lose momentum and urged immediate action, saying
both chambers of Congress had “a serious responsibility
for coming to grips with the formulation of a national
economic policy.” The Full Employment and Balanced
Growth Act of 1978, also known as the Humphrey–
Hawkins Act, called on the President to provide a yearly
report to Congress detailing how the federal government
would work to reduce the unemployment rate to 4 percent
by 1983. But the final version of the bill, which only
vaguely resembled Hawkins’s first draft, contained few
substantive guidelines for reaching the target level. At the
White House signing ceremony in October 1978, President
James Earl “Jimmy” Carter observed that the legislation was
a tribute to Senator Humphrey, who had died earlier that
year. Hawkins, who received a standing ovation for his role
in the bill, recalled, “the legislation was clearly symbolic”—a
judgment shared by many experts.9
Hawkins dedicated much of his career to enacting
legislation concerning education, job training, and equality
in the workplace. In 1974, he authored the Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention Act, which coordinated federal
efforts to reform the juvenile justice system and provided
resources to states to help keep young people in school and
prevent them from running away from home. Three years
later, Hawkins sponsored the Pregnancy Discrimination
Act that amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to make
discrimination against pregnant employees illegal. In an
impassioned plea to his colleagues, he said, “We have the
opportunity to ensure that genuine equality in the American
labor force is more than an illusion and that pregnancy will
no longer be the basis of unfavorable treatment of working
women.” A Senate version of the legislation became law. In
1978, Hawkins sponsored and served as floor manager for
a measure to reauthorize the Comprehensive Employment
and Training Act, legislation to provide occupational training and create public service jobs to counter increasing unemployment during economic recessions. Hawkins’s
legislation targeted funding for training and employment
to “economically disadvantaged” Americans, ensured states
used funds to create new jobs, and reduced fraud and abuse
related to administering the program. The Senate tabled the
bill in favor of a version of the reauthorization that originated
in that chamber; President Carter signed the bill into law in
October 1978.10
In 1984, Hawkins became chair of the Education and
Labor Committee a month after the death of the former
chair, Representative Carl Christopher Perkins of Kentucky.
Hawkins, who was known for his behind-the-scenes
legislative work, believed that his top priority as chair was
to ensure his committee’s work became law. “You try to
get things accomplished through negotiations. . . . When
seniority and leadership bring certain responsibilities,
you’re at the top and not trying to establish any sensational
new record,” he said. As chair, Hawkins continued his
aggressive pursuit of increased educational opportunities
for the country’s underprivileged communities. In 1988,
Hawkins helped secure the passage of the Augustus F.
Hawkins–Robert T. Stafford Elementary and Secondary
School Improvement Amendments of 1988, which
updated the landmark 1965 Elementary and Secondary
Education Act authorizing federal aid to U.S. schools. The
Hawkins–Stafford bill was an omnibus education package
that reauthorized funding for disadvantaged students and
children of immigrants, programs for adult education
and dropout prevention, and rewards for educational
improvements. As chair, he also shepherded through the
House legislation to renew school lunch and child nutrition
programs and a bill that would have outlined a series of
national educational goals for states to enact.11
During his final term in office, Hawkins suffered a series
of legislative setbacks. In the face of increased opposition
from both Republicans and Democrats, Hawkins continued
to support federally funded education and employment
programs. Hawkins was unable to push through a federal
childcare program, and the House failed to override a veto
by President George H.W. Bush of a substantial increase in
the minimum wage. Most significantly, in 1990, President
Bush also vetoed a major civil rights bill sponsored by
Hawkins. Passed by both the House and Senate, the Civil
Rights Act of 1990 sought to increase protection from
employment discrimination for minorities and women.
Even with a presidential veto looming, Hawkins declined
to compromise, declaring, “We have had enough input from
all parties on the bill.” Hawkins portrayed the President’s
decision as a “national retreat from civil rights,” and when
the Senate failed to overturn the veto, Hawkins’s legislation
did not become law. In 1991, following Hawkins’s
retirement, a revised version of his civil rights legislation
passed both chambers of Congress and was signed into law
by President Bush.12
Hawkins’s frustration with the tenor of the institution
and his age led him to retire at the end of the 101st
Congress in 1991. For many years afterward he lived on
Capitol Hill. Hawkins died on November 10, 2007, just
months after his 100th birthday, in Bethesda, Maryland.
“He passed on a new tradition,” noted former House
colleague Yvonne Brathwaite Burke of California, “that
African Americans can be elected, get high position in
committees and set the tone and become leaders.”13
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