A remembrance of Bertie Bowman, the longest esrving African American Capitol Hill staffer in history.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Today, Capitol Hill is known for partisanship and dysfunction – see the speakership drama of the past three weeks. But we’re going to spend the next couple of minutes remembering a man who embodied a different sensibility.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Bertie Bowman was the longest-serving African American Capitol Hill staffer in history. He died this week at 92 years old.
SUMMERS: The story of Bowman’s long congressional career began in 1944 at a tiny store in South Carolina, where Democratic Senator Burnet Maybank was campaigning for reelection.
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BERTIE BOWMAN: One day I went to MacDougall’s (ph) store, and all these cars – black, shiny cars and the chauffeurs all dressed neat and everything. And this man – this white man – Senator Maybank, now I know – was running for reelection. That was back in 1944. I was – I just had turned 13 years old. But when he left, his last words were, if you ever get to Washington, come by and see me, boy. And the people just clapped.
CHANG: Bowman took Senator Maybank at his word. He did go to Washington, and he did go and see Senator Maybank, who hired him to sweep the Capitol steps, paying Bowman’s salary himself.
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BOWMAN: I didn’t think that was going to happen like that. But we Southerners – we stick together.
SUMMERS: One job led to another. And by the time Bowman retired, he was the scheduler for the Foreign Relations Committee. Over nearly eight decades, Bowman worked for the likes of Strom Thurmond and J. William Fulbright. Both men were segregationists, but Bowman called them friends. He talked about the complexity of those relationships with Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep in 2008.
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STEVE INSKEEP: If you have somebody like Strom Thurmond, though, and he’s giving…
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