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Tribute to Hilda Mason, 1916-2007:
Leader for Justice & DC Statehood, Former DC Councilmember
Tribute to Hilda Howland Minnis Mason by Debby Hanrahan, a shorter version of which was delivered at a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition on October 19, 2007.
Ms. Mason, who passed away on Sunday, December 16, 2007 at the age of 91, was a lifelong leader for civil rights and DC democracy, one of the founding members of the DC Statehood Party in 1970 (which merged with the DC Green Party in 1999 to become the DC Statehood Green Party), and a former member of the DC Board of Education and the DC Council.
Charlie Mason, Ms. Mason's husband, died in October 2006 (Statehood Greens Mourn Charlie Mason). For more information on the history of the movement for DC statehood, see The Statehood Papers.
OCTOBER 19, 2007
Good evening. My name is Debby Hanrahan and I’ve known and worked with, and for, Hilda Mason for more than 30 years. Many of you in this room have known her longer, or worked with her more closely, so I feel especially grateful tonight to have this opportunity to pay tribute to her as the Stand Up! for Democracy in D.C. Coalition honors her for her tireless efforts on behalf of social justice, statehood, and full democracy for the District of Columbia.
Before talking more about Hilda, I as a member of the DC Statehood Green Party want to congratulate Stand Up! on its 10th anniversary and to thank its members for its most valuable service to the cause of statehood, budget autonomy, and full democratic rights for the citizens of the District of Columbia. I congratulate Stand Up! for standing for the principle that statehood, and only statehood, constitutes full democracy for the District of Columbia.
As I look around the room, I see so many people with whom I have been arrested, or people whom I bailed out of jail, or sat through your trials for allegedly disrupting Congress, or for sitting in at congressional offices in support of statehood or other issues relating to congressional interference in District of Columbia affairs.
Some of you have been so diligent in pursuing democratic rights for DC citizens that U.S. Capitol Police began to think you were there protesting even when you weren’t. In 2001, I and six other defendants, referred to as the “Democracy 7,” were acquitted in a jury trial on charges of disrupting congress when the DC appropriations bill was up for debate. During the trial, our defense attorney asked a Capitol Police officer witness if there was anyone else in the courtroom, besides the defendants, who had been in the House gallery the day of the alleged disruption. The officer searched the audience and pointed to Stand Up!'s own Anise Jenkins. Now Anise has been arrested for civil disobedience on Capitol Hill on at least two occasions, but she had not been there that particular day, at least not physically – but she is such a presence on the Hill and throughout the District for DC democracy that police see her even when she isn’t there!
So, thank you, Stand Up!, and the rest of the people in this room who, whether you know it or not, are the activist grandchildren of the woman we honor tonight who is not only grandmother to the world, but is also grandmother to the DC statehood and social justice movements.
I want to start out with a few stories that I think aptly illustrate the character and generosity of Hilda Howland M. Mason.
When the late, great Statehood Party pioneer Josephine Butler was in her final year of life, she was admitted to Howard University Hospital. One day, a friend and I were visiting Jo in the hospital, as were Jo’s niece and grandniece, when Hilda came into the room. Jo mentioned to Hilda that her grandniece was going to Russia for 3 weeks over Christmas in a student exchange program. Hilda asked the young woman if she had a warm coat to wear in the bitterly cold Russian winter. When Jo’s relative said no, she really didn’t, Hilda said that wouldn’t do – and sat down and wrote her a check to cover the cost of a new down coat.
And when Marion Barry was seriously wounded in 1977 in a shooting and hostage situation inside the District Building that resulted in the killings of a reporter and a security guard, Hilda and Charlie opened up their home for Barry to recuperate.
And there was the time when opponents of the building of the new convention center in Shaw needed money to file a lawsuit to try to stop the convention center from being built there. I went to the Masons’ house with Beth Solomon to see about getting a contribution toward a $5,000 matching grant someone else was offering us to help pay for the lawsuit. Hilda was out, but Charlie did what he and Hilda always did. He listened to our pitch and wrote a check for $5,000 to cover the entire matching grant.
And Hilda can be tough, too. Lawrence Guyot earlier today told me about the time in 1965 that he came to All Souls Unitarian Church – Hilda and Charlie’s church – to ask to speak to the congregation on the activities of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Despite the church’s reputation for progressive politics, Guyot, surprisingly, was turned down. When Guyot told Hilda about it, she immediately went to the minister privately and said, “Lawrence Guyot will speak, or Charlie and I will leave this church.” I would just note that this is a church to which Hilda and Charlie have contributed mightily both ethically and financially over the years. Needless to say, Lawrence Guyot got to speak at All Souls.
In addition to the numerous civil rights, civil liberties, and peace organizations they helped legislatively, financially, and on the picket line, Hilda and Charlie would quietly help individuals get the training they needed for jobs, help people get into college, and do whatever they could for anyone they came across who needed help.
As Guyot commented to me: “Hilda’s generosity is legendary.”
I am sure many of you in this room have similar stories about Hilda – and Charlie – that you could also tell. I’m sure that’s especially true of her daughter, Carolyn Nicholas, who is here tonight and who is writing a book about Hilda and Charlie. I know of so many examples of their quiet generosity for which they neither sought, nor received, publicity. Multiply just those acts of generosity I know about by thousands, and you still wouldn’t even come close to capturing the essence of Hilda and Charlie.
I came to know Hilda and Charlie Mason more than 30 years ago, primarily through the newly-formed DC Statehood Party. I had worked as Julius Hobson’s secretary for a time in the late 1960s, then later had worked on Hobson’s school board campaign and on Jo Butler’s campaign for the DC Council, so I became heavily involved in the DC Statehood Party. I met Hilda and Charlie when Hilda was on the school board sometime in the mid-1970s.
Later, when Hilda was on the DC Council, I worked for her as a receptionist and community outreach person for a year or so. I can’t say I worked for her. I ran behind her and Charlie. I ouldn’t keep up with them. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, I was in dozens of meetings with Hilda regarding Statehood Party activities, her election campaigns, and so many other issues of the time. In addition to the Statehood Party meetings, Hilda, like Jo Butler, seemed to be at three or four evening meetings every day of the week that took her to every eighborhood in the District. Additionally, like Julius Hobson and Jo Butler, Hilda had her eye not only on local matters, but on national and international issues, so Hilda might also be found at a Women’s Strike for Peace meeting or a nuclear freeze event on any given night or weekend.
Hilda grew up in Campbell County, Virginia – Klan country – and learned about social justice – and injustice – at an early age from her parents. Her great grandmother on her mother’s side had been a slave. Hilda’s mother Martha was a teacher. Her father ran a number of small businesses, including at one time a country store. Hilda recalled an incident in her early years when her father hurriedly arranged to have an African American man get out of town to avoid lynching.
Upon finishing high school at age 16, Hilda immediately went into teaching in Virginia. Later, in 1945, she moved to Washington, DC with Carolyn and Joyce, her two daughters from an unsuccessful marriage. While working several jobs, she also attended Miners Teachers College, from which she received her B.S. degree in 1952. She went on to get an M.A. from the old District of Columbia Teachers College in 1957.
From 1952 until 1971, Hilda held a number of public education posts throughout the District – teacher, counselor, assistant principal – at Van Ness Elementary School, Shadd Elementary School, LaSalle Laboratory School, Morgan Community School, and Adams Community School.
During that period as an educator, Hilda also became active in progressive causes. She helped organize the Washington Teachers Union in her school; she was involved in the successful effort to desegregate DC’s restaurants, and she was active in a wide variety of other civil rights activities. In 1957, she met Charles Mason, and they were married eight years later, thus beginning a unique partnership nurtured by love, family, and social activism.
Hilda and Charlie during the 1960s worked through CORE and SNCC to help provide food, housing, clothing, medical care, and transportation for people who came to Washington to demonstrate and to lobby for civil rights. Hilda worked with Julius Hobson on a number of matters, including his successful landmark lawsuit (Hobson v. Hansen) on the unequal treatment of African American students in DC’s public schools – and on the formation of the new DC Statehood Party.
In 1971, at Julius Hobson’s urging, Hilda ran for and was elected to the Board of Education where she served along with Hobson and another of tonight’s honorees, the future Mayor Marion Barry. Hilda was reelected in 1975.
An ailing Julius Hobson was elected to the DC Council as a Statehood Party candidate in 1974 and died in 1977, at which time the Statehood Party selected Hilda to replace him on the Council. Later in the year, she won an election to fill out the term, and was then reelected in 1978 and four elections thereafter, leaving office at the end of 1998.
Hilda holds the distinction of being the only person to defeat Marion Barry in a DC election. That happened in the 1990 election when Barry challenged Hilda for her Council seat in the general election, but in that showdown the “grandmother to the world” beat the “mayor for life.”
And maybe some of you don’t know that Hilda has a police record. Yes, it’s true. Back in November 1984, during the almost daily protests against apartheid at the South African Embassy, Hilda, along with Congressman Ron Dellums and Mark Stepp of the United Auto Workers union, were arrested at the embassy when they refused to leave the front steps of the building after being denied a meeting with the South African ambassador. Dellums and Stepp were held overnight in jail, while Hilda was released on her own recognizance.
While on the Council, Hilda continued her long involvement with education as chair of the Committee on Education and also served as DC representative to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Hilda pushed for quality education and funding for the public schools, for rent control, and increases in tenants’ rights, and worked to prevent reductions in vital city services. She also worked for passage of the successful nuclear weapons freeze initiative for DC, and sponsored legislation to prohibit the transportation of nuclear wastes through the District of Columbia. The list of accomplishments and organizations she has supported goes on and on.
In 1980, Hilda’s and Charlie’s dream of statehood seemed to be moving a little closer to reality when voters approved an initiative to call a local constitutional convention to draw up a state constitution. Hilda was easily elected as a delegate to the convention, which in May 1982 adopted for the proposed state of New Columbia a constitution regarded as the most progressive in the country. DC voters later approved the state constitution, and a petition for statehood was sent to the U.S. Congress. DC Statehood finally came to a vote in Congress in November 1993 and, as we sadly know, was defeated 277 to 153.
Probably Hilda’s greatest accomplishment on the DC Council was to keep alive the University of the District of Columbia Law School – named the David A. Clarke School of Law, but seen by a lot of us as the David Clarke/Hilda Mason/Charlie Mason School of Law.
Despite congressional threats in the 1990s to shut down the law school, despite strong Washington Post editorial opposition to keeping the law school open, Hilda and Charlie and Dave Clarke led the way in keeping it open. The Washington Post editorial page ripped Clarke and Hilda for their efforts to keep the school alive, and attacked the law school as unnecessary and too costly in a time of tight budgets.
As usual, on major issues in the District, the Washington Post editorial page got it wrong. Just as an aside, I’m sure Mayor Barry will recall when the Washington Post and the Board of Trade in the late 1960s and early 1970s were supporting a freeway system for the District that would have wiped out hundreds of African Americans’ homes as well as devastated other neighborhoods and landmarks. Thanks to people like Julius Hobson, Sammie Abbott, Reginald Booker, Angela Rooney, and Marion Barry, among others, who rallied, picketed, obstructed, disrupted, and got arrested, we in the District of Columbia today have a city relatively unscathed by the blight of destructive freeways.
As we know, the Hilda-Charlie-Dave Clarke effort to save the UDC law school was successful and how lucky we all are for it. For today, the David A. Clarke School of Law is the most diverse law school in the nation, with 51 percent of its students from minority groups and 64 percent women. Of the 192 American Bar Association-accredited law schools, the UDC law school has the fifth highest percentage of African American law students. The Princeton Review rated it first in the nation for most progressive students. The applicant pool has almost quadrupled in six years. The first-time bar passage rates of the law schools graduates has increased to over 60 percent.
And what does DC get out of this? All students perform a minimum of 700 hours of faculty- supervised representation of low-income DC residents in the school's outstanding clinical programs. And all students provide 40 hours of community service to non-profit, public-interest groups, the judiciary, or federal and local government in their first year in law school.
In addition to their legislative support, Hilda and Charlie also have given sizable financial contributions to the law school. While the school bears Dave Clarke’s name, the school’s law library is named for Hilda and Charles Mason. What a magnificent legacy Hilda and Charlie have left the District.
While working in Hilda’s office in the late 1970s-early 1980s, I had a chance to observe Hilda and Charlie close up. While citizen advocates for schools, civil rights, housing, tenants’ rights, and social justice were frequent visitors to her Council office, I don’t recall any lobbyists for corporate interests even setting foot inside the door. It’s not that Hilda wouldn’t see them if they showed up, it’s just that they knew Hilda was always going to put citizens’ interests over business boondoggles.
And her door was always open. Constituents could just walk in and get an appointment on the spot, and they got to see Hilda – not a staff member – unlike today, when it’s often like pulling teeth to get appointments with the councilmember herself or himself – and then you might be limited to 10 or 15 minutes.
Once while I was working for Hilda, she and Charlie asked me to mail out contribution checks to the countless organizations and individuals to which they were contributing – civil rights organizations, peace groups, social justice organizations of one type or another. When I asked Charlie if I should keep a list of recipients so Hilda could call upon them to hold little neighborhood campaign parties at election time, Charlie looked at me quizzically and said, “We don’t do that.” That was Hilda and Charlie’s way: Contributions were always given, no strings attached.
Back in 1986, the DC Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild honored Hilda and Charlie with the David and Selma Rein Community Justice Award, named for two other great local champions of civil liberties. In the program for that event, Hilda was asked what had made her remain true to her principles over the years. She cited the example of her parents and the tragic death at age 13 of her grandson Nestor. And here I quote what Hilda said to the inter viewer:
“It’s in the marrow of my bones, it is in my blood. Almost every step I take, I feel like I’m doing what my mother and father would have done. And my grandson, Nestor, I feel like I’m walking in his footsteps, too. I can’t forget where I came from. I can’t forget what my parents did to preserve their own lives. Although I’m living comfortably now, I’m not going to forget how it once was for me. And I’m not going to turn my back on people who aren’t as fortunate as I am.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the great woman and champion of statehood and social justice that we honor tonight: Hilda Mason.
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