Senator Charles Mathias, a champion of civil rights, dead at 87

By Kevin Dayhoff January 25, 2010

Former Republican U.S. Senator Charles McCurdy (Mac) Mathias has died at the age of 87.

http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2010/01/senator-charles-mathias-champion-of.html

Although he is most remembered for his decades of fervent support for civil rights; he was also know as an advocate for the Chesapeake Bay, against the war in Vietnam, and his repeated clashes with the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Mathias served in the U.S. House of Representatives for the 6th congressional district, which includes Carroll County, from 1961 to 1969.

Afterwards he served in the U.S. Senate until 1987. He was succeeded by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, who still holds the seat to this day.

He was born into a politically prominent old Maryland family in Frederick on July 24, 1922, where he attended public schools and graduated from Frederick High School in 1939.

He was the son of Charles Mathias, Sr. and Theresa Trail Mathias. Several ancestors in the Mathias family had served in the Maryland General Assembly.

A recent Washington Post tribute noted, “Sen. Mathias's great-grandfather served in the Maryland legislature in the 1860s, and his grandfather was a state senator who campaigned with Theodore Roosevelt. When the future senator was a boy, his father took him to the White House to meet presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.”

He was living in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where his family reported that he died Monday from complications of Parkinson's disease.

Mathias also served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1959 to 1960.

He graduated from Haverford College, Pennsylvania, in 1944; attended Yale University; and went on to receive a law degree from the University of Maryland in 1949

He served in the U.S. Navy, during World War II, from 1942 to 1946. After 1944, he was stationed in the Pacific Ocean theatre of the war and later in Japan, where he personally saw the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after it was destroyed by an atomic bomb.

He returned home after the war and receiving his law degree, briefly practiced law in Frederick. He served as an assistant Maryland Attorney General from 1953 to 1954 and then moved-on to serve as the municipal attorney for the city of Frederick from 1954 to 1959.

It was while he served as the Frederick city attorney that he first developed a reputation as a stalwart advocate for civil rights.

While serving in the Maryland General Assembly in 1959, he worked hard to see that Maryland finally ratified the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Maryland had not ratified the amendment, which gave African-Americans certain rights and privileges after the Civil War, almost 90 years earlier. Maryland was one of several states that did not ratify the amendment in the 1860s.

In 1968, according to multiple sources, including a New York Times tribute: in “his first election, to the Senate … he defeated Daniel Brewster, a Democratic incumbent who was a friend and former classmate at the University of Maryland Law School. Mr. Brewster had been an usher at Mr. Mathias’s wedding in 1958, and Mr. Mathias had been godfather to Mr. Brewster’s son.”

The Washington Post noted that Mathias described “the future of the Republican Party in a 1996 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Sen. Mathias said (at that time): ‘I'd like to think there would be a place for Abraham Lincoln, a place for Theodore Roosevelt, a place for Dwight D. Eisenhower. If there's a place for them, I'd like to think I could find a small niche.’

“In 2002, Sen. Mathias announced his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and in 2008 he wrote an article for The Washington Post endorsing the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

“Survivors include his wife of 51 years, Ann Bradford Mathias of Chevy Chase; two sons, Charles B. Mathias and Robert F. Mathias of the District. Other survivors include a sister, Theresa M. Michel of Frederick; a brother, Edward Trail Mathias of Baltimore; and two granddaughters.”

*****

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Jackie Robinson, the great American experiment

Jackie Robinson, the great American experiment

By Kevin Dayhoff April 15, 2009

Photo credit: Published in LOOK, v. 19, no. 4, 1955 Feb. 22, p. 78. Photo by Bob Sandberg: Jackie Robinson swinging a bat in Dodgers uniform, 1954. (19550222 1954 Jrobinson.jpg)

Art: (19880412 283) "Baltimore Baseball" by Kevin Dayhoff

Folks have been asking where they may find my column on “Jackie Robinson, the great American experiment.”

The column appeared in both the Westminster Eagle and the Carroll Eagle: Thoughts turn to baseball and Jackie Robinson Published April 17, 2009 by Carroll Eagle, Westminster Eagle and Dayhoff: Recalling Jackie Robinson, the great American experiment Published April 15, 2009 by Westminster Eagle

Pasted below is the column as it filed…

My thoughts today turn to one of my very few sports heroes – Jackie Robinson. For it was today, April 15, in 1947, that Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier that had begun in the 1880s.

Wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform with the number 42, Robinson, to paraphrase sports writer William McNeil, made his debut in front of 26,623 baseball fans at the old Ebbets Field. Approximately 14,000 of the spectators in the stands were African-Americans.

The Dodgers won 5-3; however, the real winner that day was all of us.

It was about time. As Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich wrote on March 28, 1997: “Four hundred fifty-five years after Columbus discovered America, white America discovered that blacks could play major league baseball. The first definitive clue was offered by the fifth child of a Cairo, Ga., sharecropper who was selected for the daring racial experiment.”

A brief account by the Library of Congress reveals “Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey signed a contract with Robinson to play for the team on October 23, 1945. Robinson then spent a year on a minor league team to sharpen his skills.

“Rickey, who called the move baseball's ‘great experiment,’ chose Robinson because of his excellent athletic record and strength of character. The first player to ‘cross the color line’ would have to be able to withstand intense public scrutiny and to avoid confrontation even when met with insults and hostility.”

As an aside, Richey also deserves a special place in history for having the character and insight to make it all happen. According to Povich, breaking the color barrier “had become a cause. Rickey was a former player and later a team president with high morals and a religious bent.”

It is interesting to note that Richey’s strength of conviction caused him, in earlier years when he played the game as an American League catcher, to “steadfastly” refuse to play baseball on Sundays, according to Povich.

Richey’s baseball scouts found Robinson playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the “Negro baseball leagues” in 1945.

Povich writes that Richey “warned Robinson of the insults and the racial slurs he would hear from both players and fans in every city in the league. ‘I want a player with guts — the guts not to fight back, to turn the other cheek,’ Rickey told Robinson…”

“Rickey's bargain was for Robinson to hold his temper for two years. After that he was his own man, free to combat prejudice any way he saw fit.”

Robinson, by all accounts, endured a great deal of horrific abuse. However, according to the Library of Congress account, “Not only was Robinson able to quell opposition to his presence on the field, but he quickly won the respect and enthusiasm of the fans.”

That same account says that Robinson “retired from baseball after the 1956 season with a lifetime batting average of .311 and the distinction of having stolen home an incredible 19 times. A legend even in his day, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility.”

I should note that Robinson is the focal point of one of my three favorite baseball trivia stories – two of the stories happened in April and involve the Dodgers, but do have anything to do with a baseball. The third involves a potato…

The first favorite baseball moment also took place on April 25, 1976. It was that day that outfielder Rick Monday of the Chicago Cubs dashed between two men in the Dodger Stadium outfield in Los Angeles and grabbed away an American flag that protesters were about to burn.

The other event, which involves Robinson, is memorialized by a statute in front of “KeySpan Park,” a minor league baseball stadium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. The statute is of Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese with his arm around Robinson.

Povich got the story behind the statute from New York Times’ writer Bob Herbert. In a game in Cincinnati: “As the crowd heaped abuse on Robinson, Reese called time and walked across the diamond and draped an arm around Robinson's shoulder, standing with him in defiance of the crowd's mood.

“It was at once a sentimental display of friendship for a beleaguered teammate and a resounding rebuke to the lackwits who could not come to terms with Jackie Robinson in a major league lineup.”

Povich notes that Roger Kahn, author of “The Boys of Summer,” said of the scene: “It gets my vote as baseball’s finest moment.”

And mine also.

And oh, the third story occurred on Aug. 31, 1987 and it involves a potato. Who knows the story? Tell us what you know of the “tater caper” in readers’ comments below.

That’s my two cents. What’s yours? Leave any comments here: Thoughts turn to baseball and Jackie Robinson Published April 17, 2009 by Carroll Eagle, Westminster Eagle and Dayhoff: Recalling Jackie Robinson, the great American experiment

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at kevindayhoff AT gmail.com.
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Other Recent Explore Carroll columns by Kevin Dayhoff

Cutting the 'Horse Train Stop' of Sykesville out of Howard County
Published April 26, 2009 by Carroll Eagle

Dayhoff: Getting the Community Media Center out of the closet
Published April 21, 2009 by Westminster Eagle

Thoughts turn to baseball and Jackie Robinson
Published April 17, 2009 by Carroll Eagle, Westminster Eagle

Dayhoff: Recalling Jackie Robinson, the great American experiment
Published April 15, 2009 by Westminster Eagle

Mills' contributions to hospital follow a healthful tradition
Published April 12, 2009 by Carroll Eagle

Recalling the devastating Westminster fire of 1906
Published April 8, 2009 by Westminster Eagle
... Spring Carnival. It is never too early to start teaching your children fire safety. As history shows us -- it's everyone's concern and it can be a matter of life and death. Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at kevindayhoff AT gmail.com....

County jail started out 0-for-1 when it came to holding prisoners
Published April 3, 2009 by Carroll Eagle

Dayhoff: A brief review of the Westminster Navy, and its role in American history Published April 1, 2009 by Westminster Eagle
... Navy; a proud heritage few Carroll Countians know. Now you know it too. Well, perhaps not. Happy April Fool's Day. Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster.

Merriment and joy, from one kind of cell to another
Published March 27, 2009 by Carroll Eagle, Westminster Eagle

Dayhoff says: When it comes to Obama on Jay Leno, get over it
Published March 26, 2009 by Westminster Eagle

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Diane Rehm Race in America

Tuesday February 24, 2009 10:00 Diane Rehm Race in America

Listen to this segment Real Audio Windows Media

Reaction to Attorney General Eric Holder's speech for Black History Month, his assertion that we are a "nation of cowards" on racial issues, and differing views on what we should be talking about when it comes to race.

Guests

John Payton, director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; lead counsel for the University of Michigan's successful defense of its use of race in the admissions process in two 2003 Supreme Court cases

Robert Woodson, founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise; author, "The Triumphs of Joseph: How Community Healers are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods"

Rinku Sen, president and executive director of the Applied Research Center; publisher of "ColorLines" magazine; co-author, with Fekkak Mamdouh, of "The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization"

Abigail Thernstrom, vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; co-author with her husband, historian Stephan Thernstrom, of "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" and "America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible." She has a forthcoming book, "Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections."

20090224 SDOSM Diane Rehm Race in America
Kevin Dayhoff www.kevindayhoff.net http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/
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Civil Rights movement comes alive through art

Civil Rights movement comes alive through art

By Pam Zappardino, In the Arts Monday, January 19, 2009

Art and history are seldom in the same thought, except in nightmarish memories of darkened rooms and numbing arrays of slides. Art relates to history in a broader sense, though, interpreting, as Webster says, the “record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) often including an explanation of their causes.” Some view history as, well, “dead,” not relevant to their lives. Art can help change their minds.

I’ve just spent four days on the road down South visiting sites of major campaigns in the civil rights movement. History is alive there and art is its constant companion.

Walking through King International Chapel at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, I saw the gallery of portraits, folks from everywhere who have worked for peace. They came alive through their faces and through the symbols and objects with them in those paintings, explanatory panels filling in the facts.

Read more: Civil Rights movement comes alive through art

http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/articles/2009/01/19/features/encore/encore3.txt

20090119 Civil Rights movement comes alive through art by Pam Zappardino
Kevin Dayhoff www.kevindayhoff.net http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/
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