Opinion: Happy 100th, Augustus Hawkins

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Friday, Aug. 31 is the 100th birthday of Augustus Hawkins, groundbreaking Los Angeles politician, civil rights crusader and the oldest living former member of Congress. L.A. looks and feels as it does today in part because of Hawkins’ work to reshape it, and in part because many of his efforts were overcome by time and shifting political winds. He imprinted his vision on the state and national scenes: lawyers, labor leaders and policy wonks who talk about the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act are referring to one of his landmark legislative accomplishments. He established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. California’s Rumford Act, mandating an end to housing discrimination, was introduced years earlier by Hawkins. It was overturned by voters but ultimately reinstated by the courts, and it set the stage for the end of racial restrictions in housing.

Hawkins, a New Deal (and later a Great Society) Democrat, was the second African American elected to the California legislature. He got there in 1935 by defeating the first, Republican Frederick M. Roberts (the great grandson of Sally Hemings and, Roberts claimed, Thomas Jefferson). He was elected to Congress in 1963, became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and served until 1991, when he was succeeded by Maxine Waters.

Reading the transcripts of a 1992 oral history in which Hawkins speaks to interviewer Clyde Woods is an astonishing history lesson and imperative background for understanding Los Angeles, the state, and the national scene today.

It’s hard to believe Hawkins is talking about Los Angeles. He discusses the battles of blacks just to be considered for jobs as streetcar janitors and describes Gilbert Lindsay, head janitor at the Department of Water and Power, whose office became a power center for black job-seekers. In the days when it was still impossible for a black person to be elected to city office, Lindsay and other aspiring African American leaders began to go City Council meetings each day, sit outside on benches, and vote on matters that came before the council. Lindsay, of course, ultimately was elected to the council.

Hawkins discusses the importance of Sargent Shriver — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father-in-law — in getting Martin Luther King-Charles R. Drew Medical Center started. The discussion is, of course, particularly bittersweet when read today, given the hospital’s recent closure.Today there is a park named for Hawkins that brings wetlands to South Los Angeles and a mental health clinic, still operating, on the campus of King-Drew hospital.

But despite his undisputed role he has not attracted the renown of leaders like Tom Bradley. That’s a shame. Not knowing Augustus Hawkins is not knowing Los Angeles, or the history of labor, civil rights and equality under the law in the U.S.

Happy birthday, Augustus Hawkins.

Oil on canvas by Joseph Maniscalco courtesy: Collection of U.S. House of Representatives.
Photograph of Hawkins teaching courtesy: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library.