Madam President, I rise today in support of a resolution honoring the lifetime achievement of the Reverend Leon H. Sullivan. My colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Specter, has joined me as an original cosponsor of this resolution.
Tomorrow marks the 6-year anniversary of the passing of one of America's great leaders. He was a man who changed the face of the world, a man of faith who achieved his mission in life through concrete action as well as his preaching. His family, friends, and colleagues appropriately refer to him as a ``giant among men''--a colossal force who helped overcome some of the greatest challenges of the 20th century. So I am honored to stand here today to acknowledge the extraordinary lifetime achievements of the late Reverend Leon H. Sullivan.
Originally from West Virginia, Leon Sullivan grew up during the Great Depression while racial segregation still ruled the United States. He recalled it as a time when all of the White children walked down the left side of the street and all of the Black children walked on the right side of the street. It was a time when skin color often dictated one's place in society. When Reverend Sullivan was an 8-year-old, he was reprimanded for sitting at a drugstore counter and drinking a soda. A burly White man yelled at the young Leon: ``Stand on your own two feet, you can't sit here.''
When we think of Leon Sullivan today as a man, as a reverend, and as a leader, we think of his entire life, and his was a life of courage and compassion, a life of struggle and triumph, a life of faith and family--his own family and the human family--and, finally, his was a life for others and for God.
When he was young and dealing with the kind of discrimination I just described, that kind of experience kindled a fire within his heart, and Leon Sullivan made the decision to commit his life to fighting segregation and injustice.
Throughout his teenage years, he found inspiration in the founding documents of the United States. He understood that the principle of equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution transcends skin color. He repeatedly defied tradition and deliberately frequented restaurants, libraries, and shops where Blacks were not welcome, often reciting passages from the Declaration of Independence, fearlessly challenging racism and confronting prejudice where he found it.
After graduating from high school, Leon Sullivan was awarded an athletic scholarship to West Virginia State College, where he played football and basketball and also enjoyed the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
After graduation, he was called to the ministry, a vocation that allowed him to address the religious needs of his people while continuing his fight against segregation and injustice. He moved first to Harlem, where he worked with the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell at the Abyssinian Baptist Church and attended Union Theological Seminary. He was offered a position in Philadelphia and soon emerged as a powerful source of inspiration as the pastor of the Zion Baptist Church, where he focused on the temporal as well as the spiritual well-being of his people.
He once said:
I felt that God did not just want people to have milk and honey in heaven ..... He wanted them to have some ham and eggs on earth. I believe that God just doesn't want you to go to the pearly gates. He wants you to have a better life on earth, and if you have a better life on earth and treat people right, you'll get to the pearly gates.
As part of his ministerial role, Reverend Sullivan spoke eloquently about social justice, calling on people to ``help the little man and aid those who cannot survive on their own.'' For over a decade, he helped and counseled hundreds of parishioners and others, but his realization that racial segregation would prevent his vision from becoming a reality led him to join the civil rights moment. He was one of the first civil rights leaders to recognize how the economic power of his people could be harnessed to promote the cause of racial equality. He created the Selective Patronage Movement, through which 400 Black ministers in Philadelphia mobilized their parishioners to boycott businesses which practiced discrimination. Exercising economic power through the Selective Patronage Movement led to the opening of thousands of jobs in previously segregated companies in Philadelphia alone.
These victories inspired Sullivan to create the Opportunities Industrial Utilization Center of America, the so-called OIC, which provided and still provides today comprehensive training so that motivated workers can be prepared to take advantage of opportunities opening up to them. As he said, ``Integration without preparation brings frustration.'' Originally based in Philadelphia, the OIC captured the attention of President Lyndon Johnson, who worked directly with Reverend Sullivan to improve the infrastructure and efficiency of the organization and ultimately bring it to the national stage. Today, OIC America has chapters in 30 States and has helped thousands of African Americans achieve success through its emphasis on self-reliance and self-improvement.
The nationally recognized success of OIC led the chairman of General Motors to approach Reverend Sullivan about serving on the GM board of directors. The Reverend accepted the offer and served for over 20 years as the first African American on the GM board.
His service to GM brought him face to face again with racism, this time in the international arena. Reverend Sullivan traveled to South Africa, where he was targeted as a troublesome visitor because of his meetings with anti- apartheid organizers. As he was leaving the country, he was stopped at the airport and strip-searched. Reverend Sullivan, the pastor of one of the largest churches in the United States, a director of General Motors, stood there in his underwear and asked the White officials in charge why this was happening.
The official said, ``I am doing to you what I have to do.''
Reverend Sullivan replied: ``When I get back, I am going to do to you what I have to do.''
What Leon Sullivan did was bring the economic power of corporate America on the heads of those who supported apartheid in South Africa. Under what came to be known as the Sullivan Principles, hundreds of multinational corporations publicly opposed racism and discrimination in South Africa. When the statement of principle failed to change the status quo fast enough, Reverend Sullivan raised the stakes. In his words: ``I threatened South Africa and said in 2 years Mandela must be freed, apartheid must end and blacks must vote or else I will bring every American company I can out of South Africa ..... ''
His efforts eventually evolved into a full campaign of disinvestment by hundreds of companies and by institutional investors holding hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate stock. And it worked. Apartheid collapsed, and Nelson Mandela went from prisoner to head of state.
Reverend Sullivan's work continued long after the end of apartheid. In 1999, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan invited him to deliver a speech at the United Nations, expanding his moral code of corporate social responsibility into the internally accepted Global Sullivan Principles.
Beyond this, he led a campaign to rescue African children from the overall lack of schools, infrastructure, hospitals and security.
Reverend Sullivan said of children:
Children do not get here on their own ..... They didn't ask to be here ..... They didn't ask who their mothers or fathers would be or the situations in which they were born. So what society has to do is reach and get the most out of that child you can .....
What I and so many others admired most about the Reverend Leon Sullivan was his compassion for those truly in need.
He called those of us who are able to stand on our own feet and improve ourselves, while always protecting the helpless.
Now I stand in this Chamber, on the floor of the Senate, to honor the energy and compassion of this great man dedicated to his noble causes. I have only touched on a few of the many contributions to our Nation and our world. These examples illustrate his unique ability to fight discrimination and injustice across the globe. From childhood until his death, Leon Sullivan believed in the future and demonstrated a relentless optimism regardless of the obstacles that tried to prohibit success. He characterized his life's work by saying:
I would not be doing what I am doing if I weren't optimistic about it. I'm reaching into a barrel and taking out a little hand at a time, not a whole lot ..... but if enough hands go down in the next fifty, seventy-five, hundred years, we'll clean out that barrel.
As we know, when so many of us pass on, most good people do, in fact, leave a legacy of family and close friends. Reverend Sullivan certainly did that. With us today is his family, represented by his daughter Hope and his friends and colleagues, many who worked with him for decades. But Leon Sullivan left a legacy far beyond family and friends. The Zion Baptist Church remains a bastion of faith and good works in north Philadelphia. OIC of America and OIC International continue to prepare thousands for productive, well-paying jobs. The International Foundation for Education and Self-Help trains students for careers ranging from teaching to banking. The Sullivan Charitable Trust and Progress Investment Associates carries on his economic and real estate development initiatives. The Leon Sullivan Foundation presents its biannual summit meeting in Africa, encouraging cooperation between African Americans and countries and leaders throughout the continent of Africa. The Global Sullivan Principles serve as a beacon for corporate social responsibility and human rights throughout the world. South Africa, the nation that Reverend Sullivan helped free from apartheid, still struggles, yet stands as a shining example of what people speaking truth and wielding moral force can do in our world.
For all this and so much more that remains unsaid today, we honor the Rev. Leon Sullivan--today and always.
Thank you, and I yield the floor.
