At 80, Rep. Hawkins Finds Challenges Keep Him Active

When Rep. Augustus F. Hawkins, dean of the nation’s black elected officials, was voted into the state Assembly 53 years ago this month, he became the only black member of the California Legislature.

“I remember driving from Los Angeles to Sacramento and seeing big signs on the way, ‘No Negroes Admitted Here,’ ‘We Do Not Solicit the Negro Trade,’ ” recalls the South Los Angeles Democrat who now has longer continuous service in state-elected offices than any other Californian.

When Hawkins arrived in the state capital, he remembers, “I went to some functions that I did not realize blacks had not gone to. We were not expected to accept some invitations.”

$100-a-Plate Dinner

He has come a long way since then. A still-vigorous 80, Hawkins will be honored at a special $100-a-plate dinner at the Bonaventure on Wednesday celebrating his 25 years in Congress. Scores of political dignitaries, as well as about 1,500 of his supporters, are expected to attend the affair.

Far from announcing retirement plans that night, Hawkins--senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus--will probably talk about his 1988 reelection campaign.

Expressing a desire to serve under a Democratic president after next year’s elections, he said in an interview last week:

“New challenges keep me quite busy. . . . I try to be very active. I play golf. I spend 30 minutes each morning walking briskly to work. I follow a very bland diet, avoid highly seasoned foods. I don’t recall ever missing a day of work.”

Hawkins is at the peak of his political power. Elected to Congress in 1962 when he became the first black elected to the House from a state west of the Mississippi, he has now amassed important seniority. Since 1984 he has been chairman of the House Education and Labor committee.

He was a political success, for that matter, even before going to Congress. During an era far less congenial to minority politicians, he spent 28 years in the state Assembly, becoming chairman of the influential Rules Committee, and in 1959, he missed becoming Speaker by two votes.

Although black lawmakers are shown considerable deference these days, Hawkins contends that, for the nation’s black population in general, conditions have not changed as much many think.

“I feel the changes have been to a large extent somewhat artificial,” he said in an interview last week. “In terms of employment and education, the gap (between the races) is still very wide. That worries me. While we have made progress and changes have occurred, there’s too wide a gap still remaining. . . .

“I find some of the same problems, in a more subtle way, as I found 50 years ago.”

‘Not Racially Oriented’

That pessimistic assessment, coming from Hawkins, probably means more than if it came from most minority spokesmen in or out of government, for the congressman long ago won a Statehouse and U.S. Capitol reputation for being soft-spoken and circumspect and not particularly racial in his political approach.

The ranking Republican on the Education and Labor Committee, Rep. James M. Jeffords of Vermont, said last week: “He is a black man, and he certainly represents the people of his district and blacks very effectively. But he never gives the opinion that’s a factor to be considered. He never talks of it. He always thinks in general terms of people who need help. He is not racially oriented.”

Much the same point was made by Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles), who represents a district neighboring Hawkins’.

“I think Gus has prided himself on a technique of speaking for disadvantaged people but has never characterized them as being entirely black,” Dixon said. “There are a lot of communities who have whites who have a need for public money. . . . He has never focused on race only. That brings him a great degree of credibility.”

Congressional Quarterly’s book, “Politics in America, The 100th Congress,” begins its four-page essay on the congressman with this observation: “While other black political leaders have made fiery speeches and demonstrated for civil rights, gentle Gus Hawkins has plodded along, working through the legislative system for jobs, equal opportunity and education.”

Hawkins himself once remarked, “Racializing an issue defeats my purpose--which is to get people on my side.”

It’s a view he has long held. Even during the 1960s, when a series of bloody riots erupted in his own district and other black communities around the country, Hawkins declared, “We need clearer thinking and fewer exhibitionists in the civil rights movement.”

Another Republican colleague, Rep. Bill Goodling of Pennsylvania, says the congressman reflects such views in running the Education and Labor Committee. He described Hawkins as “an outstanding leader in a very quiet sort of way. Not a wheeler and dealer. He’s not a shouter. He lets us know in committee that we’ll do our fighting there and there’ll be nothing said on the (House) floor.”

Hawkins in last week’s interview said he decided early in his career that “there’s no point in going around with a chip on one’s shoulder, saying no one can be converted. Often, they can be converted. . . .”

“In Congress, you soon find out that there are others that know something too,” he said. “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 records.

“I try to get bipartisan support. . . . I could make a lot more noise as a Democrat, but I wouldn’t be successful in getting things through and getting them signed.”

One result is that Hawkins has had an impressive record of accomplishment, even though his name identification with the public has not been that high.

In the Legislature, he authored bills establishing a low-cost housing program in the state, putting domestic employees under the workmen’s compensation system and, in 1959, he sponsored the California Fair Employment Practices Act. He also had key roles in the establishment of the UCLA law and medical schools, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College and the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

Minimum Wage Bill

In Congress, Hawkins co-authored the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act, and authored the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the Job Training Partnership Act, the Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act and the Pregnancy Disability Act. He has recently been active sponsoring a bill to increase the minimum wage.

Often, however, he has had to compromise, and sometimes the compromises were emasculations.

For example, after Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey’s death, Hawkins, in order to secure passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, settled in 1978 for a much-watered-down version in negotiations with the Carter Administration.

The act, as it emerged, was stripped of several major provisions including a requirement that, if need be, the government would serve as the employer of last resort to ensure attainment of a 4% unemployment goal.

By the following year, Hawkins was so disgusted with what he felt was the Carter Administration’s failure to enforce the provisions left in the bill that he issued a nine-point “indictment” of alleged violations of it. It got little publicity, and the Administration scarcely bothered to respond.

Reagan Years Not Easy

Even today, Hawkins is bitter about what happened to Humphrey-Hawkins, not only in the Carter years but also under the Reagan Administration.

“Even if it was watered down, if that act could be enforced, it would have solved a lot of problems,” he said last week. “We wouldn’t have the deficits had we invested the money in creating jobs. We would have a growth economy and not have used high unemployment as a means of fighting inflation.”

The Reagan years have not been easy for those who, like Hawkins, believe in the power of big government to solve people’s problems.

Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), observes: “It was easy to espouse Gus’s causes prior to 1980. It may be easy in the ‘90s to do it again. In the ‘80s, however, it’s been tough to find people, even among the black leaders, who are willing, as Gus is, to persevere.”

Locally, in contrast with his frequently quiet, behind-the-scenes approach in the Legislature and Congress, Hawkins has occasionally expressed himself clearly, even militantly, On the Watts riot, for example, he said, in 1965: “In Los Angeles, there is police brutality, the same as in Selma (Alabama), and there is segregation just about as bad as in Selma. There are better schools, but they are certainly segregated. . . . (The police have been) abusive and arrogant and have attempted to control things by force, not by more modern methods of control. . . . Race relations have broken down completely.”

And, writing in The Times, in 1976, during the dispute over busing for integration in the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District, Hawkins declared:

“It would be foolhardy to expect voluntary measures alone to ensure compliance with the mandate of Brown vs. Board of Education. That decision charted a clear course. All Americans must share equal access to educational facilities, and ‘all deliberate speed’ is required to reach that destination. Take away busing as a tool for getting there, and you seriously jeopardize the whole trip.”

By taking care to be sufficiently militant when it counts and making sure that he is attentive to the needs of his district. Hawkins has managed to avoid election challenges over the years from any of the numerous ambitious, black Democrats in his district.

Hawkins, of moderate weight, is only 5 feet, 5 inches tall. He retains, even at 80, an energy that belies his years, remaining capable, as he has demonstrated at recent public hearings, of incisive questioning of witnesses. He has an excellent, precise memory.

Hawkins, born in Shreveport, La., on Aug. 31, 1907, concluded at a very early age that racial segregation was ridiculous. So light-skinned that he frequently passed on first meeting for white, Hawkins often found streetcar conductors moving the segregation signs splitting the cars between black and white behind him, so he would be in the white section. “I got so angry with the whole thing and embarrassed that I would just walk,” he once recalled.

At the age of 11, he moved to Los Angeles. He attended Jefferson High School and received his AB degree at UCLA in 1931. Even with a college degree, he was only able to land a job as a soda jerk in that Depression year.

Eventually, he got into the real estate business and in 1934, at the age of 27, was elected to the state Assembly to replace Republican Fred Roberts, the only black then serving there.

Hawkins, married in 1941 to Pegae A. Smith, quickly proved himself an effective legislator.

“Gus is very bright,” explains his friend, Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana). “He is a master of the political tools, including working with legislators personally and working on legislation.”

In the early days in Sacramento, Hawkins recalls, some of the other Assembly members made off-color racial remarks to him.

“I felt much more embarrassed for others than I did for myself,” he said. “As time went on, they became very apologetic. No longer did individuals openly express such feelings.

“We would simply try to educate and constructively change some of the policies without openly challenging some of the individuals that espoused them. When they became better acquainted with our style, they became in some cases strong exponents of our views.”

Said Bane: “Gus Hawkins, with his appearance and coloring, could have passed the color line a long time ago. He didn’t choose to do that. He chose to work for the black people, and I always respected him for that.”

His popularity and the respect in which he was held helped Hawkins break out of racial isolation in the Legislature. In the reapportionment that followed the 1960 Census, a congressional district was specifically fashioned for him.

Elected to Congress in 1962, Hawkins accumulated the seniority needed to be eligible for committee chairmanships. Before becoming head of the Education and Labor Committee, he chaired the House Administration Committee, which oversees the expenses and perks of all House members. Hawkins was so fair to the Republican members in this job that he drew fire from some Democrats.

Pegae, his wife of 25 years, died in 1966. They had no children. In 1977, he married a member of his staff, Elsie Taylor, who has three children.

Hawkins and his wife live in a town house within walking distance of the Capitol. They have long spent many of their weekends at a lake-shore retreat in Maryland, where the congressman fishes from his 33-foot cabin cruiser, ‘La Mia II.’

Hawkins’ political life has been untainted by public scandal. “He’s Mr. Clean incarnate,” says Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) today. “His enemies don’t even think up a rumor to lay on him.”

Long described as the blackest and poorest in California, Hawkins’ congressional district is changing in some respects. Centered in Watts, the eastern portion of the district--across Alameda Street in such suburbs as Huntington Park and South Gate--has undergone a transition from working-class white to Latino. Even so, half of the district still is black, and its political center of gravity remains in Watts.

“I represent a large number of blacks who are confined to the ghetto,” Hawkins says. “As individuals improve their economic status, they move out. . . . With the exception of a few old-timers, I represent the individuals who can’t afford to move out.”