Augustus “Gus” Hawkins, the first black Californian to serve in Congress, died Nov. 10 of natural causes, just more than two months after his 100th birthday.
Hawkins, who graduated from UCLA in 1931 with a degree in economics, spent more than half his life working in public service. He was born on Aug. 31, 1907 in Shreveport, La., to Nyanza and Hattie Hawkins. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1918 to pursue better education and escape the racial tensions of the Deep South.
In 1935, nearly three decades before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Hawkins was elected to the California State Assembly, where he served until 1962. In 1963, he was elected to the 88th Congress, representing South Los Angeles.
Hawkins continued serving as a congressman until 1990.
Upon retiring from Congress, Hawkins donated his files to UCLA. His library is now stored in the Department of Special Collections.
In a 1988 interview with the Center for Oral History Research at UCLA, Hawkins described being one of six or seven black students when UCLA was still the southern branch of UC Berkeley.
One of the other black students was Ralph Bunche, with whom Hawkins also attended Jefferson High School. Hawkins said the two were friends and had both worked as custodians at the UCLA campus.
“I always said that if I had had the administration building and Bunche the gymnasium then I would have turned out to be the statesman and Bunche the politician,” Hawkins said in the interview.
Instead, Hawkins went on to be the politician, characterized by those who worked with him as a small-statured, soft-spoken man who shied away from the limelight but was supremely effective in achieving his goals. Some of his most important legislation includes Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which sought to limit unemployment and inflation.
Because Hawkins was light-skinned, others would often assume he was white and make racist comments in his presence, said Alva Stevenson an interviewer and researcher at the Center for Oral History Research. Hawkins’ insight into discrimination partially motivated his lifelong fight for equality.
Hawkins also believed in treating individuals with respect.
“He was really a great mentor in how he showed you how to be a public official in a very genuine way,” said Derrick Mims, who began working for Hawkins in 1985 as a field representative.
“He wasn’t really one for the limelight,” he said. “He wanted the light shined on the issue and on the legislation.”
Mims said Hawkins was the ultimate statesman in the way that he carried himself and was able as a Democrat to push legislation through Republican-dominated Congresses.
Marti Moore recalled meeting Hawkins in 1986 when she and other parents were lobbying against mandatory bussing that would take their children to schools outside of their community.
Hawkins once asked Moore why she was not working for him. When Moore replied that she did need a job, he told her to stop by his office that afternoon, where he hired Moore as a case worker.
“He believed if you were willing to make an effort, to apply yourself … the doors needed to be open for you to do that,” Moore said. “For the staff and the community, he wanted to see that those doors opened.”
Moore, who still works in Hawkins’ former district, now represented by Maxine Waters, said that when she met with Hawkins a week after his 100th birthday, his first questions were about his constituents, making sure that they were being taken care of.
She said that the congressman was never late; he would often say that, unlike him, his constituents were on a time clock, and their time was valuable.
When Hawkins had settled in Washington, D.C., after his retirement, he would insist on picking Moore up from the airport when she was in town.
“I talked to four other people: we all worked with him,” said Moore. “All of us came to the same conclusion which was that all of us benefited from working with him … but we all felt that we were special to him, that we were his family.”
Hawkins, who was married twice but had no children of his own, took up the battle of equal access to education for all children.
Alfred Moore, a retired associate superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said Hawkins visited schools in his district several times and brought other lawmakers through LAUSD to show the positive effects of education legislation.
Moore explained that these schools were able to implement new programs and improve scholastic achievement because of Hawkins’ efforts.
“That funding comes from a bill that he wrote,” Moore said. “That was really Congressman Hawkins’ bill to help poor children, no matter what their color might be.”
Hawkins also organized conferences so educators working with minority students could share ideas, as well as supported voter registration efforts to ensure that citizens could demand effects from Congress, Moore said.
In his public and his personal life, the congressman shunned flashy behavior in favor of effective action.
“When people would grab the mic and bluster about something, he’d be in the back fixing the problem,” said Susan Jefferson, Hawkins’ niece.
Jefferson described her uncle as warm and fun-loving, an avid fisherman who loved to relax at his home or travel with his wife when he was not working.
“If we had a problem, we could always talk to Uncle Gus. He was very open with his family,” said Jefferson. “He was always very positive, even if things weren’t good.”
Jefferson recalls that her mother would prepare all of her uncle’s favorite foods when he would visit. “That was her baby brother, and she adored him,” she said.
Because her “family of pioneers” was always politically involved ““ Jefferson’s father was the first black judge west of the Mississippi ““ she assumed her uncle’s work was normal.
“When I was a child, when I was really little, I called him “˜Uncle Guth,’ Jefferson said. “I had no idea how powerful he was; I just thought he was a magic man.”
For those who knew him, the man was as great as the work he accomplished.
“We all called him “˜the boss,'” said Marti Moore. “He was the boss, and he still is the boss, but he was the one true gentleman that I met in my entire life. He was a gentle man. And he was humble.”