Respectable Negroes of the Week

Condoleezza Rice (Conservative, but still Respectable)
“There was absolutely no prospect of a Middle East peace process that was going to lead to anything,” she said in an interview in May about her thinking in 2001. “I just didn’t see it.” Nearly seven tumultuous years later, Ms. Rice, as secretary of state, has led the Bush administration to a startling turnaround and is now thrusting the United States as forcefully as Mr. Clinton once did into the role of mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians. The culmination of her efforts occurs this week in Annapolis, Md., as Mr. Bush, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, meet to set the outlines of a final peace agreement before the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

Augustus Hawkins
Augustus Hawkins, who was California's first black congressman and helped form the Congressional Black Caucus, has died. He was 100. Hawkins died Saturday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., of symptoms related to old age, his niece, Susan Jefferson, said Monday. Hawkins, a Democrat, represented south Los Angeles for more than half a century, first starting off in the state Legislature in 1935 and then getting elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962. Hawkins sponsored the equal employment section of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He helped create the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971. Hawkins also co-wrote the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1978 that was designed to reduce unemployment and inflation.

...its been a slow week for respectable negroes.