Augustus Hawkins

Augustus Freeman Hawkins (August 31, 1907 – November 10, 2007) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served in the California State Assembly from 1935 to 1963 and the U.S. House Of Representatives from 1963 to 1991.

In 1918, the family moved to Los Angeles.

Hawkins graduated from Jefferson High School in 1926, and received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1931.

After graduation, he planned to study civil engineering, but the financial constraints of the Great Depression made this impossible.

This contributed towards his interest in politics, and his lifelong devotion to education.

After graduating, Hawkins operated a real-estate company with his brother and studied government.

Unlike the majority of African Americans, he supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign for president in 1932.

Hawkins favored measures such as the New Deal, which was wildly popular in the United States at large and the African-American community in particular.

In 1934, Hawkins supported the more controversial 1934 California gubernatorial election of Upton Sinclair, a socialist.

Although Sinclair lost, Hawkins defeated Republican Frederick Madison Roberts, the great-grandson of Sally Hemings and President Thomas Jefferson and the first African American in the California State Assembly.

Hawkins would serve as a Democratic member of the Assembly from 1935 until 1963; by the time of his departure, Hawkins was the Assembly's most senior member, as Roberts was before him.

Hawkins's district was primarily Latino American and African American.

During his time in the Assembly, he introduced legislation including "a fair housing act, a fair employment practices act, low-cost housing and disability insurance legislation, and workers’ compensation provisions for domestic workers."

Along with education, fair practices in employment and housing became Hawkins's major causes.

He received little support at the time for these measures from the Democratic Party, however.

Nevertheless, he was able to get some measures passed, including his fair-housing law, which prohibited discrimination by any builders that received federal funds.

Roosevelt would go on to be the first Democratic president to win the black vote, in 1936.

Hawkins was also a delegate to the National Conventions of 1940, 1944 and 1960, as well as an electoral college presidential elector from California in 1944.

While serving in the California State Assembly, Hawkins married Pegga Adeline Smith on August 28, 1945.

In 1958, Hawkins sought to be Speaker of the California State Assembly, which was the second-most powerful position in the state, after the Governor of California.

Hawkins lost to Ralph M. Brown, but was made chairman of the powerful Rules Committee.

In 1962, Hawkins won a newly created majority-black congressional district encompassing central Los Angeles With an endorsement from John F. Kennedy, Hawkins easily won the primary and the general election.

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.”

From 1963 to 1991, Hawkins represented California's 21st District (1963–1975), and the 29th District (1975–1991), covering southern Los Angeles County, in Congress.

Hawkins was consistently elected with over 80% of the vote in his Democratic-friendly district.

He was the first black representative to be elected from west of the Mississippi River.

Hawkins was a strong supporter of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.

Over the course of his career, Hawkins authored more than 300 state and federal laws, the most famous of which are Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act.

He was known as the "silent warrior" for his commitment to education and ending unemployment.

Hawkins was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the youngest of five children, to Nyanza Hawkins and Hattie Freeman.

Early in his congressional career, he authored legislation including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Hawkins was a strong supporter of civil rights, and he toured the South in 1964 to advocate for African-American voter registration.

Smith died in 1966, and Hawkins later married Elsie Taylor in 1977.

After retiring from Congress, he stayed in the Washington area because his wife preferred it, living there until his death, which came two months after hers.

An African American of mixed-race ancestry, Hawkins was very light-skinned and reportedly resembled his English grandfather.

Throughout his life, he was often assumed to be of solely white ancestry, although he refused to pass as white.

Augustus Hawkins served in California at a time when black representation was so limited that "the black strategy for gaining political power was to exercise influence within the Democratic Party through voting for, and lobbying, white politicians."

Aside from Hawkins, "Los Angeles blacks had no other political representative in city, county, state, or federal government."

Hawkins was part of a more general shift by African Americans away from the Republican and towards the Democratic Party.

Had Hawkins succeeded, he would have become the first African-American Speaker in California history, a feat that Willie Brown would achieve in 1980.