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DATE January 13, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Eleanor Holmes Norton discusses her congressionalâ¨career, her chairmanship at the Equal Employment Opportunityâ¨Commission and civil rightsâ¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.â¨â¨My guest, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is the subject of the new biography "Fire inâ¨My Soul," about her life in the civil rights movement and Congress. Theâ¨author, Joan Steinau Lester, says she wanted to find out how Norton escapedâ¨the limitations typically imposed on women to become a national figure.â¨Norton is the congressional representative from Washington, DC, the placeâ¨where her great-grandfather settled after he escaped from slavery in Virginia.â¨She was brought up in the middle class while Washington was still segregated.â¨When she attended Antioch College, she headed its chapter of the NAACP. Inâ¨1970, after working as a civil rights lawyer for the ACLU, she became New Yorkâ¨City's first woman to serve as the commissioner of human rights. Underâ¨President Carter she was the first woman to chair the Equal Employmentâ¨Opportunity Commission, where she was instrumental in writing the sexualâ¨harassment guidelines. She's served in Congress since 1990.â¨â¨We talked first about growing up in segregated Washington, DC.â¨â¨In the biography of you, you say middle-class parents in Washington, DC, whenâ¨you were growing up, went to great pains to indoctrinated their black childrenâ¨to mitigate the effects of segregation. Can you talk about the raceâ¨consciousness you were brought up with as a child?â¨â¨Delegate ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (Washington, DC): Yes, I was brought up toâ¨believe that the white people in the District, many of them had really comeâ¨from Maryland and Virginia, some of them had come rural places, were not veryâ¨sophisticated people, and that people who regarded us as inferior, we who hadâ¨Howard University, where many of our parents had gone to school, we who hadâ¨educated people in our community, we who had Dunbar High School, the collegeâ¨preparatory high school that sent so many people away to college. It is weâ¨who should understand that these folks, many of them less educated than we,â¨were to be pitied. And certainly their notion that we were inferior was toâ¨make up for the fact that they lacked much of what we had struggled to get.â¨And I do put an emphasis on struggled.â¨â¨GROSS: You graduated from Dunbar High School at the top of your class, andâ¨this was a special college preparatory school. You were in the lastâ¨segregated class to graduate. When you went to Antioch, as a freshman atâ¨Antioch, you were exposed, for the first time, to the idea of the Holocaust;â¨you hadn't heard about that before. And you say in the biography of you thatâ¨it drove home to you how sequestered your segregated world and your educationâ¨had been. And I'm wondering if there were other examples like that, where asâ¨excellent as your education was, there was certain things you realized youâ¨didn't know about that, that you had been isolated from when you enteredâ¨college.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, at Antioch, where my peers were young people who hadâ¨gone to Bronx High School of Science and schools like music and art in Newâ¨York, people who'd come from the very best public schools in the Unitedâ¨States, in a real sense put my own education in some context. I knew it wasâ¨good; it was good for a segregated education. It wasn't as good academicallyâ¨as it should have been, and it certainly hadn't exposed me to the world.â¨â¨The clearest indication of that is that no educated person, certainly from aâ¨top-rated high school, should have been able to graduate from high schoolâ¨without knowing about the Holocaust. Understand, by this time, the Holocaustâ¨isn't even that old--we're talking 1955--and yet that had happened to me. Andâ¨while Dunbar had provided me with a good enough background so that even theâ¨gaps in knowledge didn't hold me back particularly because the grounding hadâ¨been so good, but the notion that something as consequential as the Holocaustâ¨had not ever been mentioned was astounding to me, because the notion of sixâ¨million people being murdered for their ethnicity struck me right in the gut.â¨I understood it immediately, because I was a black girl. And I didn't see howâ¨any black school, or any school in the United States, could have failed toâ¨have spent some time, if doing nothing else, then making the analogy.â¨â¨Dunbar is where people were recruited for the best schools in the Unitedâ¨States. It's one of the few black schools that you could come to and recruitâ¨people to go the Ivy League, to the good small schools. And many of ourâ¨teachers had PhDs, and yet I did not know that. And it said to me how muchâ¨else I must not know.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Eleanor Holmes Norton, and there's a new biography of herâ¨called "Fire in My Soul."â¨â¨When you started to become associated with the civil rights movement, and toâ¨live a life that was more politically and socially radical, how did yourâ¨parents feel about this? Were they afraid that if you moved away from theâ¨middle class that you could eventually fall off the edge economically and notâ¨be able to get back?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, I must say, I had wonderfully tolerant parents, aâ¨mother and a father. I know when I went to Mississippi, particularly myâ¨mother was concerned, because this was 1963, before the delta had, as we said,â¨`been opened up' to humanity. But I was never discouraged by my parents forâ¨my pursuit of these ideas. It may be because my father was a hard-core Newâ¨Dealer. And remember, he was in the generation that came to the Democraticâ¨Party, because the prior generation, generations, had been Republicans. So heâ¨had seen great change in his political life. My mother, also a New Dealer,â¨was at time so disgusted with the racism of the Democratic Party she votedâ¨Socialist, or even Republican. These were very intelligent people whoâ¨themselves had worked their way through college and graduate school. So theyâ¨never believed that I would somehow go off and be a Bohemian...â¨â¨GROSS: Right.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: ...and find myself an attic to crawl into.â¨â¨GROSS: Now Joan Steinau Lester, who wrote the biography of you, "Fire in Myâ¨Soul," she says at Antioch your justice concerns `implied alliance with ratherâ¨than differentiation from the ordinary black person from whom middle classâ¨blacks often tried to escape.' Do you agree with that perception? And if youâ¨do, can you elaborate on it?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, I think she gets that from the fact that I wasâ¨terribly concerned with economic justice. I looked into socialism. I didn'tâ¨understand why black people were so--remember, the majority of black peopleâ¨were poor. I made the connection between poor whites and poor blacks. And soâ¨I immediately felt an affinity with people who were left out. Who is it--itâ¨was Eugene Debs who said, `As long as there's a working class, I'm in it,' orâ¨something--that stirred me. And I early became oriented toward the laborâ¨movement, which I was as the great movement for bringing blacks and whitesâ¨together who were in the same kind of economic difficulty and in the Congress.â¨And goodness, for most of my life I considered myself a Democrat to be sure,â¨but a labor Democrat. I saw the labor movement turn from one which alsoâ¨excluded blacks, particularly in the craft unions, to unions like the CIO andâ¨the UAW, which organized blacks.â¨â¨So, yes, I early linked my own racial politics with the politics of the poorâ¨and the working class. It just seemed to me to flow together, just as I thinkâ¨my own sense of race makes me see direct analogies to women, to Hispanics, toâ¨gays and anybody else who has faced the kind of discrimination I have faced.â¨â¨GROSS: When you were a student, you not only organized in the North, but youâ¨spent some time in the Mississippi delta organizing. What struck you mostâ¨about how different the civil rights movement looked in Mississippi comparedâ¨to how it looked up North?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, first you've got to recognize, when I went toâ¨Mississippi--I went to Mississippi in 1963. By that time SNCC, CORE, theâ¨Urban League, the civil rights movement was all over the South, but not inâ¨Mississippi. Mississippi was the place where terrorism--and I use the wordâ¨carefully--took place. For example, when sit-ins occurred at Jackson, theâ¨largest city, people didn't just spit on them, they beat them terribly. Theâ¨sit-ins occurred much later in Jackson. Now I had met Bob Moses--this wasâ¨this extraordinarily heroic Harvard mathematician who had gone south, luredâ¨into the delta precisely by the fact that the delta was where you were notâ¨supposed to go, and where even the activist civil rights movement hadn't gone.â¨â¨And when Bob Moses came to the North to raise money, I met him and it is heâ¨who recruited me to come to the delta in the summer of 1963. He wanted me toâ¨do a prototype of freedom schools, with the notion, perhaps, of havingâ¨students come in 1964--and we will remember Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, theâ¨three who were killed in 1964--to do freedom schools all across the South. Weâ¨wanted to teach people how to vote so that when they went in they would knowâ¨what to say to the man who told them they couldn't vote, how to fill out theâ¨forms. And here was I, a Yale Law School student, who could come and do theâ¨prototype. And that is what I did, and I have to tell you, different--it wasâ¨not only different from anything I had ever seen, it was different fromâ¨anything the civil rights movement was doing, because of the hostility of theâ¨place, because I came straight out of--my first day I saw that hostility withâ¨people put in jail and because, in a sense, we had to break open the meanestâ¨part of the South, and it was so mean that even a year later, when hundreds ofâ¨civil rights workers came, within the first week, three were killed, wereâ¨murdered, and we still commemorate their lives to this very day.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Eleanor Holmes Norton. There's a new biography of herâ¨called "Fire in My Soul." We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: Eleanor Holmes Norton is my guest, and she was the commissioner ofâ¨human rights in New York City, she chaired the Equal Employment Opportunityâ¨Commission under President Carter. She's now the congressional delegate fromâ¨the District of Columbia. There's a new biography of her called "Fire in Myâ¨Soul."â¨â¨In the biography of you, you say that after reading Simone de Beauvoir's "Theâ¨Second Sex" you became a feminist, and you say if you were associated withâ¨civil rights, with labor rights, the analogies are intellectually compelling,â¨that transition to feminism is easy. You say what you didn't understand wasâ¨why the transition didn't happen to everybody who was in the civil rightsâ¨movement. Why did you feel so strongly that African-American women needed aâ¨women's movement?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, I didn't feel African-American women needed a women'sâ¨movement. I believed that women of the world needed a women's movement.â¨â¨GROSS: I know. I guess I put it that way because a lot of African-Americanâ¨women, as you say in the biography, felt that the women's movement was soâ¨white in its orientation and its population that they didn't identify with it.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: That's right. And they didn't identify with it becauseâ¨racial discrimination was so compelling. Race and color had been the birthâ¨defect, as someone has called it, of our country; that it was hard to getâ¨around it to anything else, especially since racial discrimination was stillâ¨here when the women's movement rose. That is to say, some of the worst of itâ¨was still around. But I thought one way to get people to understand theirâ¨alliance, even with white women, with women across the globe, was to make sureâ¨they understood that half of black people were women and that black women wereâ¨not treated equal with black men, that women were valuable allies for blackâ¨men and black women in breaking through discrimination, albeit very differentâ¨often, that blacks faced and black men faced and women faced, but neverthelessâ¨of the same genre of irrationality.â¨â¨And I thought the analogies ought to be clear: Once you have experiencedâ¨discrimination, it ought to be clear that somebody else--might be a Hispanic,â¨might be a woman who, in fact, was not poor, but who's been excluded justâ¨because of who she is, that that analogy is self-defining, it seemed to me.â¨â¨GROSS: You were sworn in as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunityâ¨Commission in June of 1977. As the chairman of the EEOC, you wrote the sexualâ¨harassment guidelines. Why did you feel the need to get sexual harassment inâ¨writing?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: I called the staff in one day. We had seen these individualâ¨cases come before the commission. Oh, were they horrific. And what theseâ¨cases required was a woman to come forward and state sometimes abominableâ¨things about what had happened to her. We're not talking rape, but we'reâ¨talking things that are very ugly. And we saw that employers were aghast.â¨Often they did not know. Of course, the law says you know or should haveâ¨known when you employ somebody, so the employer was embarrassed, the woman wasâ¨mortified. I said, `Just a moment. What are we here for?' The purpose ofâ¨guidelines, which are akin to regulations, is to put all parties on notice ofâ¨what the offensive conduct is so that they can take action against it. Asâ¨long as we're sitting here waiting on a case-by-case basis to define even whatâ¨this new form of discrimination but old workplace practice is, the wholeâ¨burden is going to be on women. Employers are going to feel victimizedâ¨because they didn't know and they didn't know quite what to do about it. Andâ¨we thought--I thought at least, writing guidelines, even though that would beâ¨controversial, would at least put employers on notice and they'd begin toâ¨chase it out of the workplace themselves.â¨â¨Of course, employers always are against regulations and guidelines, but one ofâ¨the most gratifying things to see was what happened after the guidelines,â¨because the guidelines asked employers to use the official guidelines of theâ¨federal government, our own guidelines, to write their own internal rules.â¨Well, employers were quick to do so, and then to send their rules to us soâ¨that we could see what they had done. They also, by the way, were makingâ¨something of a defense for themselves, at least partially so, if an employeeâ¨engaged in this kind of conduct, although the employer would still beâ¨responsible, having taken some action might mitigate some of these damages.â¨So we regarded this as a win-win.â¨â¨GROSS: Well...â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: And the guidelines withstood Supreme Court review and haveâ¨been very useful to women and to employers since.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, it's kind of paradoxical that, after writing these sexualâ¨harassment guidelines, you went on to see one of your successors at the EEOC,â¨Clarence Thomas, be accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill after he wasâ¨nominated to serve as Supreme Court justice. You were one of theâ¨congresspeople to say to the Senate, `You have to have a hearing on this. Youâ¨have to hear her. You have to hear Anita Hill and hear her charges.' Whatâ¨are your beliefs now about what happened?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, I was one of the seven or eight women who walked overâ¨to the Senate when it looked like the Senate was not even going to bring thisâ¨matter up. I thought it would be a taint on the court if, in fact, Thomasâ¨went on and this hung over his head. I thought he needed it to come on.â¨There's no question in my mind if you looked at the demeanor of Anita Hill,â¨think about what it takes to make this accusation, understood her backgroundâ¨of honesty and integrity, that what she said was true. The notion that sheâ¨would sit down and make up some of those was an appalling accusation,â¨particularly since it was brought out of her. She never--it was when theâ¨investigators came to her that this was brought out of her. She did not comeâ¨forward initially on her own with this accusation, but she was brave enough,â¨once they came forward and once it had to be made known to the Senate to comeâ¨forward and state what happened.â¨â¨So there's no question in my mind that it happened. And I think that, as timeâ¨has gone on, anyone who studies that record will understand that this is not aâ¨woman who came forward and fabricated such an atrocious notion.â¨â¨GROSS: You're a lawyer. Has your view of the Clarence Thomas sexualâ¨harassment charges made you more skeptical of the Supreme Court, the currentâ¨Supreme Court?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: It's not the sexual harassment charges that made me moreâ¨skeptical. We knew exactly where Clarence Thomas stood on issues ofâ¨importance to black people, to women, to the great progressive laws of theâ¨20th century. I'm very skeptical of a Supreme Court that has done all itâ¨could to throw over much of the progress of the last 75 years. But that's notâ¨much related to the sexual harassment matter. I mean, he's on the court now.â¨He's got to live with that. I'm far more concerned about the stance he hasâ¨taken. I think it is a perversion of what it means to have anâ¨African-American on the court, to have had Clarence Thomas to follow Thurgoodâ¨Marshall.â¨â¨GROSS: Eleanor Holmes Norton will be back in the second half of the show.â¨There's a new biography of her called "Fire in My Soul," written by Joanâ¨Steinau Lester.â¨â¨I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨GROSS: Coming up, getting elected to Congress and forming an unlikelyâ¨political friendship with Newt Gingrich. We continue our conversation withâ¨Eleanor Holmes Norton. And Ken Tucker reviews "Redemption's Son," the thirdâ¨CD by singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Eleanor Holmes Norton.â¨â¨There's a new biography of her called "Fire in My Soul," about her life in theâ¨civil rights movement and politics. Norton is the former New York Cityâ¨Commissioner of Human Rights. Under President Carter, she became the firstâ¨woman to serve as the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.â¨Since 1990, she's represented Washington, DC, in Congress.â¨â¨Now Washington, DC, doesn't have a vote in Congress. You are the soleâ¨representative in Congress. There are no senators, there's oneâ¨congressperson, and that's you. Could you give us a very brief historicalâ¨explanation about why the nation's capital doesn't have a vote in Congress?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Framers never meant it that way. The district--those whoâ¨lived in the district, for 10 years, did have the vote, because the districtâ¨was formed from Maryland and Virginia, and took 10 years for it to become theâ¨District of Columbia. The framers, I'm sure, expected Congress to thereforeâ¨give the vote once the city became the nation's capital. Congress never didâ¨that. In the beginning there were many who believed that race had a lot to doâ¨with it. There was not a majority black population until almost 1960. Butâ¨there were always large numbers of blacks here. There's a sense that peopleâ¨didn't believe that this place, which had so many blacks, should have thatâ¨kind of, perhaps, shared power. And then there was a proprietary sense.â¨`This is our capital. And we're going to disenfranchise the people who liveâ¨in our capital.' Here you have a city of 600,000 people. And they're secondâ¨per capita in federal income taxes. And no senators.â¨â¨GROSS: Can you explain to us what--where you have a vote and where you don'tâ¨have a vote and how, if at all, that's--the status of that has changed duringâ¨your years in Congress?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: I don't have the final vote on the House floor, which is theâ¨vote that's emblematic of American citizenship. That's atrociousness byâ¨people who are second per capita in federal income taxes. I do have the voteâ¨where many people think it counts most, in committees, because that's whereâ¨you bring home things to your constituents. And I actually won the right toâ¨vote on the House floor in the Committee of the Whole, as it is called.â¨â¨I'm a constitutional lawyer. Shortly after I got to Congress I figured outâ¨that if I could vote in committee that I should--I could vote in the Committeeâ¨of the Whole--that's what you see on C-SPAN--and that's where most of ourâ¨business is transacted. Then there's a final vote there, but most of ourâ¨business is transacted, and I got the right to vote in the Committee of theâ¨Whole. The Democrats were in power then. The Republicans sued. The courtsâ¨upheld the right to vote in the Committee of the Whole, but the Republicans,â¨when they took control of the Congress, then took back that right to vote.â¨And this is even during the fact...â¨â¨GROSS: This was in 1995.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: That was in 1995.â¨â¨GROSS: Uh-huh. OK. So what do you want now? You're going after the fullâ¨vote.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Now I'm going after the full vote in the House and the twoâ¨senators that anybody who pays federal income tax in this country should beâ¨entitled to.â¨â¨GROSS: You are now in a Republican-controlled Congress and at the same timeâ¨as a Republican president, so the Republican Party has a lot of legislationâ¨it's going to try to push through during this Republican era. What do youâ¨think will be the Democratic strategy to try to prevent that from happening?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: With Republicans in control of both houses, the Democratsâ¨are going to have to do two things. One, appeal to the public to bringâ¨pressure on the Republicans so that we can force compromises. And, two,â¨depend largely on the Senate, where a senator even in the minority can keepâ¨things from happening. I should indicate that in many respects I'm unlikeâ¨most members of the House, because my city's budget, after it passes, it hasâ¨to come to the House because the Congress can still intervene in our businessâ¨in a most undemocratic way and because there are no senators. I have had toâ¨learn to work with Republicans who are my ideological opposites, and that hasâ¨been perhaps some of the fun of the job.â¨â¨A close ally, and people will not believe this, was Newt Gingrich. Newtâ¨Gingrich, like me, was a professor. I had been a tenured professor of law atâ¨Georgetown. He was a PhD. He had a great appreciation for what the nation'sâ¨capital was and should be as a historical matter. And time and again, he wasâ¨very helpful to me. I work closely, I have an understanding with our speaker.â¨I've even worked with Trent Lott on tax matters for the District of Columbiaâ¨very cooperatively. Never saw any of the racism that so appalled people, orâ¨if it wasn't racism, certainly the racial insensitivity that came out.â¨â¨And a real sense--I'm put in the position where despite being a deeplyâ¨ideological Democrat when it comes to national issues, when it comes to issuesâ¨affecting my city, I've got to make Republicans understand their obligation toâ¨work with my city. I work with this president. I worked with George Bush,â¨his father. And I've been able to do this because no one expects me to leaveâ¨my national principles somehow in order to do something for the nation'sâ¨capital.â¨â¨And I've been able to get lots of legislation that's important for us. I'llâ¨just name one. Through a Republican Congress, I got a bill that allows anyâ¨youngster in the District of Columbia to go to any public college anywhere inâ¨the United States at low in-state tuition with the federal government payingâ¨the difference. And I argued that we had only an open admission university--aâ¨wonderful one, but it certainly doesn't fit a district of 600,000 people--andâ¨that if we valued education, district residents had to have opportunities forâ¨higher education similar to people who live in states, and we won that. Inâ¨order to do that, I had to work with Republicans in the Senate, Republicans inâ¨the House from the committee level on up. So in a real sense, my career Iâ¨think shows that you can have a schizophrenic career in the House ofâ¨Representatives.â¨â¨GROSS: The biography of you quotes how you introduced Newt Gingrich to theâ¨people gathered at a town meeting in Washington, DC. And this was when he wasâ¨speaker of the House. I'll read this. You said--in introducing him, youâ¨said, "I want you to know that the speaker has helped me in many ways. Whenâ¨it looked like the district was about to lose $200 million for these raggedyâ¨roads out here, I went to the speaker and was able to save that money. Butâ¨the speaker knows I oppose his entire national agenda from the Contract onâ¨America to the death penalty. And he knows that I seek to replace him asâ¨speaker of the House of Representatives. I'm very pleased to introduce you toâ¨my good friend, the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich." That'sâ¨schizophrenic.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, Newt loved it. He fell out laughing. So did I.â¨Because that was our understanding all along. You may remember that it wasâ¨when Newt was speaker that the federal government kept closing down? Well,â¨the District of Columbia, which had its budget over here even though it hadâ¨already been passed because it has to be somehow ratified by the federalâ¨government, therefore, closed down with it. Can you imagine? This is aâ¨living, breathing city, and yet we closed down with the federal government.â¨The federal government got closed down at least five or six times thereafter.â¨Each time, I went to the speaker and said, `Newt, you're not going to closeâ¨down this city, are you?' And each time he kept it open. So I'm not one ofâ¨his detractors. Of course, I disagree--I said so. I said so openly. Butâ¨that didn't keep us from working closely together to benefit the nation'sâ¨capital. It was his capital, too. It's not just my capital.â¨â¨GROSS: Now you say that you didn't see a racist side of Trent Lott. Althoughâ¨Trent Lott was forced out of his position as majority leader, he's going toâ¨get a prestigious chairmanship in the Senate. What's your reaction to that?â¨Do you think...â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, we--look, I think the difficulty the Black Caucus hadâ¨with Trent Lott was largely that he was the leader in the Senate. We don'tâ¨have anything to do with how they apportion their chairmanships. I thinkâ¨probably most people thought he would get a chairmanship. We think thatâ¨whether or not he remained in the Senate wasn't our business, either. That'sâ¨the business of the people of Mississippi. Only they can decide thatâ¨question.â¨â¨GROSS: When he said what he did at Strom Thurmond's birthday party, did youâ¨see those comments as reflecting a racism that he still had? Did you seeâ¨those comments as reflecting racism that exists in other parts of theâ¨Republican Party?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, I'm very reluctant to attribute racism, which is seenâ¨as a kind of personal attribute, to anybody. Here I bring from the civilâ¨rights movement the sense that we didn't particularly care where people stoodâ¨on us. He just cared how they treated us. Now I have to be clear, Trent Lottâ¨had been very helpful to the District of Columbia. In no way had I seen anyâ¨racism or even the kind of racial insensitivity as some would call thatâ¨remark. And yet it is clear the Trent Lott had once represented a district inâ¨the Congress--remember he came from the House--where you could speak looselyâ¨about race. And that stuff, that old-school stuff was still with him. Heâ¨hadn't shaken it. Look, the Senate is full of reconstructed men, people whoâ¨lived lives with racism, and who have changed. I think people who haveâ¨changed need to be rewarded, or else they don't have any reason to change,â¨because no matter what they do, you're not going to be with them.â¨â¨I remember when George Wallace ran again. I mean, he was out and then he cameâ¨back and ran for, I guess, governor. And black people actually voted withâ¨him. At that time, I was a young woman. I couldn't believe it. I said, `Howâ¨can they vote for George Wallace?' But African-Americans had seen a realâ¨change in George Wallace and rewarded him for changing. I'm talking about theâ¨African-Americans in Alabama.â¨â¨GROSS: Mm-hmm.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: So in a real sense, you know, the notion that once you hadâ¨those views, you are persona non grata with us is very self-defeating. Ourâ¨point should be to bring them to us regardless of how they feel, regardless ofâ¨their views. We want to make sure they vote with us and that all the outwardâ¨manifestations of racism are gone from everything they do.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Eleanor Holmes Norton. There's a new biography of herâ¨called "Fire in My Soul." We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: Eleanor Holmes Norton is my guest, and she's the congressionalâ¨representative from Washington, DC; former head of the Equal Employmentâ¨Opportunity Commission; former ACLU lawyer. There's a new biography of herâ¨called "Fire in My Soul."â¨â¨The Republican Party has been trying to expand the number of African-Americansâ¨in the party and to expand the number of very visible African-Americans in theâ¨party. Opinions of those efforts?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Oh, they are pathetic. For example, the Republicans have aâ¨party problem. They like to say that somehow Democrats take blacks forâ¨granted. Be real. Did we take them for granted when the Democrats actuallyâ¨lost the entire South, the entire white South because it embraced racialâ¨harmony and racial equality? I mean, it is Democrats who stand up constantlyâ¨for the agenda of black America.â¨â¨The Republicans, interestingly these days, come forward with their own blackâ¨agenda. They say, `Well, we have things that blacks are for,' and they comeâ¨up with something like faith-based, you know, whose primary beneficiaries willâ¨be the religious right. And I don't know of a single African-American leaderâ¨who has put faith-based at the top of his list or even hardly on his list.â¨Indeed the president's faith-based initiative the entire Black Caucus opposesâ¨because it allows religious organizations to discriminate in who they hire,â¨hiring people only of their own religion.â¨â¨Or they put vouchers because many African-Americans in their concern with poorâ¨public schools, if asked, will say, `Yeah, I'm for vouchers. Give me someâ¨money to go someplace, I'll go.' Once their own representatives tell themâ¨what that voucher would mean and where the money would come from, you will notâ¨find our black constituents voting us out because the Black Caucus, 100â¨percent, opposes vouchers.â¨â¨So vouchers and faith-based is on their agenda. Look, fellas, is all I canâ¨say to Republicans, none of that is on the African-American agenda. You goâ¨into to the ghettos, that is not on their agenda. They want uninsured to haveâ¨health care; they want the Republicans to put affordable housing back on theâ¨agenda; they want the president's education bill fully funded; they wantâ¨Republicans to stop shooting affirmative action in the back. I don't see anyâ¨of that on their agenda. Until it's on their agenda, at least in some form,â¨they are not going to get African-American votes, pure and simple.â¨â¨GROSS: You helped write the affirmative action guidelines. What do you thinkâ¨would be appropriate affirmative action for today?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Unfortunately, many Americans, including manyâ¨African-Americans, don't understand that affirmative action is a temporaryâ¨remedy. You don't have nearly as much need for some kinds of affirmativeâ¨action in some places, for example, some workplaces, as you would have hadâ¨when I chaired the Equal Opportunity Commission, beginning in the late '70s.â¨What you certainly need today is the kind of affirmative action now beingâ¨fought over in the Supreme Court and the University of Michigan cases. Lastâ¨thing you want to do is to cut the legs out from African-Americans who areâ¨striving to get the best education they can.â¨â¨This is an example of where African-Americans will be watching the Republicanâ¨president. Will he go in and ask that this program, which is so critical in aâ¨state university, be taken down? If he does, I mean, I think that's just theâ¨ball game.â¨â¨GROSS: I want to tell you what I thought was the funniest part of theâ¨biography of you. One of the first times--well, one of the early times youâ¨were on TV in your position as commissioner of human rights in New York, youâ¨used the word `Polack' to describe Polish people.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Well, I'm glad you think that was funny. I was humiliated.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, you didn't realize apparently that this was a slang derogatoryâ¨expression for Polish people. What impact did that have on you to useâ¨something that's a derogatory expression and not even know that it was that?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: Isn't--well, that's akin to not knowing that six millionâ¨Jews had been murdered. I grew up in a very black environment. No exposureâ¨to white people. Certainly no exposure to ethnic white people. The onlyâ¨white people that were here, you know, were white people from Maryland,â¨Virginia or native Washingtonians, sometimes hillbillies. But people withâ¨Polish names or even Irish names and Italian names, they didn't live for theâ¨most part in DC. And I don't remember ever having to refer to Poles. Butâ¨here am I, sophisticated Yale graduate, Eleanor Holmes Norton had been an ACLUâ¨lawyer, I had my own television program once I became human rightsâ¨commissioner, and I used the word `Polack' as you use, you know, blacks, notâ¨even understanding what I'm saying.â¨â¨That is no excuse. I couldn't believe it when I came off the air and peopleâ¨said, `You know you used the word "Polack"?' I said, `Yeah? Let's see, wouldâ¨it be better to say "Pole"?' They had, of course--I recognized that the factâ¨that this was stupid and ignorant was no excuse. There's no excuse for beingâ¨stupid and ignorant. I should have been exposed, I should have somehow pickedâ¨it up.â¨â¨And so the way I dealt with it was--and perhaps Trent Lott should have doneâ¨this--to be immediately apologetic, to say, `This was an inexcusable thing toâ¨do.' I told them why I did it. I didn't want people to think I did itâ¨because I really believed that that was a term to be used and I kind of wipedâ¨it from my view and it kind of just came back. I told them I was stupid andâ¨ignorant. But stupidity and ignorance is no excuse, particularly when you'reâ¨human rights commissioner of New York.â¨â¨I have to tell you that Poles in New York were wonderful. After they heard meâ¨and, you know, the Daily News had my picture with my big Afro and had quotedâ¨what I said and then quoted my response, after they heard my response, I gotâ¨so many letters and so many calls really of forgiveness, of understanding fromâ¨Poles in New York. So I appreciated the way people received my stupidity.â¨â¨GROSS: One last question. Anyone who looks at the biography of you, "Fire inâ¨My Soul," will see photographs of you with a very, very large Afro. When youâ¨had your Afro, when you first started to grow it, what was the importance ofâ¨it to you?â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: I long for my Afro. Now I have to keep it short. I stillâ¨have an Afro. I was one of the first blacks I knew to get an Afro, and I haveâ¨to say it came after `black is beautiful' became a slogan. I had alwaysâ¨detested having my hair straightened. Boy, I hated that. Then the edges gotâ¨nappy, you'd have to touch up the edges. And when black is beautifulâ¨revealed--and I must tell you, it was a revelation--that this nappy hairâ¨wasn't ugly, it was the way it was supposed to be, there were ways to wear it;â¨that we're attractive by letting it all hang out and grow and grow. You know,â¨there are many ways in which I have felt liberated. One was, of course, whenâ¨feminism came and I could be truly liberated to be the woman that I think Iâ¨was always becoming, but nothing is more liberating than letting your hair beâ¨naturally what your hair is, so that you don't spend all your time thinkingâ¨about your hair. And you regard your hair as perfectly acceptable even thoughâ¨it's natural, indeed, it's beautiful even though it's nappy.â¨â¨GROSS: Eleanor Holmes Norton, thank you so much for talking with us.â¨â¨Delegate NORTON: It was my pleasure.â¨â¨GROSS: Eleanor Holmes Norton is the congressional representative fromâ¨Washington, DC. The new biography of her is called "Fire in My Soul."â¨â¨Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews the new CD by Joseph Arthur. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Review: Joseph Arthur's recent album "Redemption's Son"â¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨Joseph Arthur is an Ohio-born New York-based singer-songwriter who recentlyâ¨released his third album called "Redemption's Son." Rock critic Ken Tuckerâ¨says Arthur, playing most of the instruments himself and overdubbing his ownâ¨voices in the choruses, is making a different kind of lush, personal rockâ¨music.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Evidence")â¨â¨Mr. JOSEPH ARTHUR: (Singing) I need a dream. I need a bigger dream. Tell meâ¨if you know what I mean. I want to live...â¨â¨KEN TUCKER reporting:â¨â¨In that beautiful piece of music called "Evidence," Joseph Arthur sings `Iâ¨need a dream. I need a bigger dream. Tell me if you know what I mean.' It'sâ¨this searching, beseeching quality of Arthur's music that I find soâ¨intriguing. When Arthur speaks of a bigger dream, he seems to mean a desireâ¨for new experiences, new goals, new reasons to fall in love as well as aâ¨yearning for a spiritual quest that's larger than his everyday experience.â¨â¨You don't entitle an album "Redemption's Son" without making a listener cockâ¨his or her ear for its religious implications. And references to Christ do,â¨in fact, abound throughout this collection.â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Redemption's Son")â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) I don't know where we've been. Could you tell me whereâ¨we are again? And Jesus is my only friend. No one else knows who I am. Iâ¨know I'll never make it on the cross. Spend my days looking for a woman thatâ¨I lost. He was too proud to have a boss. Sold himself out but he couldn'tâ¨afford the cost. No one knows how he felt. Hung himself in the county jail.â¨There were those who said he would burn in hell. I don't think they knew himâ¨very well.â¨â¨TUCKER: On that title song, Arthur enlists Jesus in his own journey to,â¨quote, "spend my days looking for a woman that I lost." Who's that? A lover,â¨a mother, or sister? Arthur keeps things open-ended, allusive and elusive.â¨His album, which stretches out to a roomy 75 minutes plus, is one long pun onâ¨religion and romance. Sometimes he hallucinates that he is Christ andâ¨creepily sings to a woman that he's pursued her, quote, "since your red lipsâ¨turned blue," which I assume means she's dead. Much of the music onâ¨"Redemption's Son" is standard issue guitar and harmonica, singer-songwriter,â¨with Bob Dylan and Neil Young the salient vocal models. But on a moreâ¨elaborately constructed composition like "Nation of Slaves," Arthur piles onâ¨overdubs of his voice, whipping them up into a thick, tense chorus that againâ¨comments punningly on religious and romantic obsession, chanting over andâ¨over, `I can't find my way without following you.'â¨â¨(Soundbite of "Nation of Slaves")â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) Live in a time where we all gonna fall apart withâ¨chemicals rising up over the sun. A nuclear mind evolution of human heart isâ¨the creation we're gonna become. A nation of slaves. We all say that I can'tâ¨find my way without following you. And I can't find my way without followingâ¨you. And I can't find my way without following you. And I can't find my wayâ¨without following you. And I can't. Burned by...â¨â¨TUCKER: In another song called "Permission," Joseph Arthur says, `I don'tâ¨need your permission to pray for you.' And his assertion almost sounds like aâ¨threat. So does his song title "You Are Loved." The implication is, you getâ¨his fervent prayers whether you want them or not, and heaven knows what he'sâ¨praying for. Arthur is willing to make obsession come off as both deliriouslyâ¨devotional and dementedly insistent. What gives his music power is that heâ¨sings about all this in such a mild matter-of-fact tone. He's created a long,â¨gorgeous album that might very well send a cold chill down your back.â¨â¨GROSS: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewedâ¨"Redemption's Son" by Joseph Arthur.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) One, two, three. And where we live is where we hideâ¨because we can't forgive what's inside. We have sweet love.â¨â¨Backup Singers: We have sweet love.â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) We have sweet love.â¨â¨Backup Singers: We have sweet love.â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR and Backup Singers: (Singing) In the night, voices of light,â¨voices of shadows and the runaways running from love and every sorrow leftâ¨behind.â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) And when we wake up, it's already dark. And I touchâ¨your face...â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR and Backup Singers: (Singing) ...to feel alive.â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) We have sweet love.â¨â¨Backup Singers: We have sweet love.â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR: (Singing) We have sweet love.â¨â¨Backup Singers: We have sweet love.â¨â¨Mr. ARTHUR and Backup Singers: (Singing) In the night, voices of light,â¨voices of the shadows and the runaways running from love and every sorrow leftâ¨behind. In the night, voices of light, voices of the shadows and the runawaysâ¨running from love and every sorrow left behind. In the night...