Activists protest building named after segregationist senator

Posted 7:05AM on Wednesday 5th February 2003 ( 22 years ago )

WASHINGTON - A group led by comedian and social activist Dick Gregory wants to the name of a longtime Georgia senator removed from a Senate office building because of the senator's support of racial segregation. Sen. Richard Russell's 38-year career in the U.S. Senate led his colleagues to rename the Old Senate Office Building after him in 1972, a year after his death. The Georgia Democrat mentored Lyndon B. Johnson and shaped U.S. military policy during the Cold War as chairman of the Armed Services and the Appropriations Committees. At the same time, Russell also was a segregationist who, with other Southerners, blocked anti-lynching and other civil rights legislation. Gregory and others have formed a group, ``Change the Name,'' that wants to erase the words etched in stone on the Russell Senate Office Building. Once people ``realize who this man was and what he represented, I don't think there will be any problem at all in changing that name,'' Gregory said at a news conference Tuesday. The group sent letters last month to all 100 senators asking them to pass a resolution to change the building's name, but it has received no responses, Gregory said. When the Senate changed the name three decades ago on a voice vote, only one senator objected, Sen. Philip Hart, D-Mich. Hart's name now graces another Senate building. ``I thought we had learned that it is unwise to anticipate history's verdict,'' Hart cautioned, though he did not criticize Russell as a legislator. Senate historian Donald Ritchie could not recall any precedence for un-naming a Senate building. He described Russell as a ``senator's senator.'' ``He was always a gentleman, his word was his bond, and people respected him,'' Ritchie said. ``That building was named after him despite his record.'' Russell served as governor of Georgia before being elected to the Senate. A federal office building in Atlanta is also named for him.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/2/183795