YOUTH FORUM

African-American Leaders Discuss Rewards and Sacrifices of Public Service

Hundreds of Students Attend Society Forum; Panelists Say Education and Coalition-Building Are Key Tools for Career in Public Service

Emphasizing the importance of education and of the need to build coalitions to create constructive policy, eight African-American public servants spoke to and answered questions from an audience of Washington, DC-area high school students.

The September 30th "African Americans in Public Service Youth Forum" featured Congressional panelists during two morning sessions, including former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL), former Representative Louis Stokes (D-OH), and current House members James Clyburn (D-SC), Julia Carson (D-IN), Chaka Fattah (D-PA), Sanford Bishop, Jr. (D-GA), and Eva Clayton (D-NC). Juan Williams moderated the morning sessions. Williams is a Washington Post columnist, panelist on the political commentary program Fox News Sunday, and author of the best-selling book Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. Dr. Shirley Washington, author of the Society’s Outstanding African Americans of Congress (1998)—the book that inspired the forum—opened the event with a brief overview of the history of African-American members of Congress from Reconstruction to the 1990s.
Response to the event in the Dirksen Senate Office Building was so high that the program—originally designed for 200 persons—was expanded to accommodate more than 300 students and teachers. It was the fourth time since 1996 that the Society has sponsored a youth forum bringing young people and Members of Congress into a dialogue about public service and current issues.

During lunch, students had the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with fellow students from others schools in the metropolitan area. Afterward, Toni Fay, Vice President of Community Relations for Time Warner Inc., spoke about the operations and organization of a large, modern company. Students also questioned Fay about corporate accountability and the public’s responsibility to speak out on issues involving business activities.

It was a unique experience for students to be able to meet people who have moved into leadership positions by overcoming barriers imposed because of their racial backgrounds. Moseley-Braun, who now awaits Senate confirmation as President Clinton’s choice as Ambassador to New Zealand, was the first African-American woman elected to the Senate and only the fourth black ever to serve in that body. Clayton and Carson also broke similar color barriers: Clayton was the first African-American woman to represent North Carolina, and Carson was the first African American to be elected to Congress by Indianapolis voters. Stokes rose from humble origins to serve as an Ohio Representative for three decades. He was the first African American to serve on the House Appropriations Committee.

The students, however, nearly upstaged the distinguished speakers with the quality and thoughtfulness of the questions they put to the panel. Latoya Peterson of John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, MD, opened the Q&A session by asking the panelists to compare the legacies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Malcolm X. Cassandra Thomas of Suitland High School in the District asked whether the Black Caucus, historically dominated by the Democratic Party, "has opened its platform to the new Republican African-American Congressmen and how will this effect a bipartisan agenda based on a conservative point of view?"  Stephanie Isaacson of Bannekar High School in the District asked panelists why statehood for the District of Columbia was "such a difficult issue to address politically? How do you think it can best be framed?"

In their introductory statements and answers to students’ questions the panelists struck themes of self-reliance, participation, commitment to excellence in education and the need to reach consensus by "working within the system" for change.

Members of both morning panels stressed the importance of the early civil rights movement and its chief architects, such as King. "We stand on their shoulders," Clyburn noted.

Asked to whom blacks need to look as a leader in the 1990s, Moseley-Braun fired back a sharp response. "The notion, that because as African Americans we have to have a person come and deliver us from our bondage, is frankly something that I thought—I had hoped—we left on the Edmund Pettis bridge," Moseley-Braun said, drawing loud cheers from the audience. "We have to be able to move forward and understand that there are a lot of different voices in the black community, there are a lot of different perspectives . . . Dr. King said it best when he said, ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.’ Leadership really is about service: the more you do for others, the more of a leader you are yourself."

Moseley-Braun—like Clyburn and even Williams, who injected occasional commentary—suggested that since opportunities now existed for young black men and women that were not available even a generation ago, the responsibility for leadership is increasingly a shared one within the African-American community. "You all are leaders, each in your own way," Moseley-Braun said. Williams elaborated, "In a sense . . . we have leaders in every field, in the arts, science, medicine, economics. It’s really a result of the tremendous progress that’s been made in the past several decades.  Inequalities, the panelists admitted, still exist.

Many of the students expressed concern about the lack of opportunities open to blacks to get a good education, especially a college education. Panelists agreed that government could do a lot to improve the education system, but they also challenged students to change the "culture" that tends to diminish the importance of academic achievement.

"We as a people have to do a better job educating America and educating the United States Congress," Carson said. "Nobody in this room has to fill out an application to go to prison. They go to prison, they get their meals, and they get their room and board. Period. No questions asked. You’ve got to fill out a lot of applications to go to college. There’s something wrong with an American educational system that would give you equal opportunity to go to the penitentiary and no opportunity at all to go to college."

Chaka Fattah, whose chief focus has been on education during two decades of public service as a Pennsylvania state representative and U.S. Congressman, spelled out the responsibilities of students.

"I also think it’s important as students that you rally around the notion that academic excellence is, and should be, the primary vocation that students are involved in. You’ve got to give as much credit to people who are on the honor roll as one of those stars on the basketball team," Fattah said. "And I think that in our community we need to remember our history. There was a time when it was illegal in our country for an African American to be taught how to read or write; you could be put in jail and the person teaching you could be put in jail. We had to fight to get admitted to colleges. Even today there are difficulties. We should be the last ones who are less than enthusiastic about learning."

Clayton echoed that sentiment. "Young people, you yourselves have to motivate each other about the significance of staying in school and achieving," she said. "You don’t want to have your future predicted by your own careless disregard for the opportunity that you have while you are in school—not only to attend school but to do your very best while in school."

Speakers drew on their legislative experiences and also their personal lives to address the importance of building coalitions, achieving consensus and winning support for their causes in a Congress where they are a distinct minority. They also offered life strategies that students could utilize in contending with discrimination.

Clyburn, a native South Carolinian, used his own marriage to illustrate both points. His background, with much of his youth spent in an urban setting, was a far different experience from that of his wife, Emily, who grew up on a farm and walked four miles each way to elementary school. For their partnership to succeed, he soon realized the importance of compromise and of a keen appreciation for the extent to which each person is a product of his or her experiences.

"What I learned early in my marriage was that people are no more than their experiences allow them to be," Clyburn told the audience. "That’s all you can be. And you ought not get all that hung up on what other people are. You look at your experience; look at what it is that you have within you; and try to make a success of it.

"I tell young people all the time: there is going to be a future. I don’t care—you can sit around if you want. But there is going to be a future. You have to decide whether or not you are going of be a part of it."

A transcript of the September 30th "African Americans in Public Service Youth Forum" question and answer sessions

The forum was made possible through the generous financial assistance of Time Warner, Inc., Kemper Open, the Marjorie Merriweather Post Foundation, Riggs Bank NA and Houston Associates, Inc.