Okay. I'm tired of hearing about "Clinton retreads". Where the heck does anyone here think we are going to find experienced people appointed by a Democratic President, who is still youngish (has their teeth, or most of them), to work in the Obama administration? Reminder: Bill Clinton was in office for eight years. Prior to that we have to go back to the Carter Administration.
I'm tired of hearing about "Mark Rich" and "Chiquita Banana", as if that is the sum total of Holder's professional life. So I decided to do some digging and explore just who Eric Holder is, what he believes, and what have been some of his accomplishments.
Eric Holder, Jr. was born on January 21, 1951. His parents were both immigrants to the US from Barbados.
Holder was born in the Bronx and grew up in East Elmhurst, then a mix of middle-class Italians (Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia is from the area) and African-Americans. His father sold real estate and his mother worked as a secretary. Neither of his parents went to college but they valued education and encouraged in Holder a strong work ethic. He didn't need much motivation, according to his mother, Miriam Holder. "I think he was always mature beyond his years," she says.
Four years younger than I am, I can identify with much of his early life story. I have cousins whose family came from Barbados, an island where education is valued almost above all else. "Bajans" (Barbadians) are ranked 5th in the world in literacy (The US is ranked 18th)
THE CALL TO SERVICE
On Jan. 20, 1961, Holder was 9 years old and living in Queens, N.Y. Like millions of other Americans, he and his family gathered around the TV that day to watch President Kennedy's inaugural speech. They lived near LaGuardia Airport, so the television's sound was often drowned out by planes, but Holder clearly remembers hearing Kennedy's call to service -- a message that had a lasting impact on him.
I remember that speech of JFK's, which led me in later years to become a VISTA volunteer.
I too spent my early teenage years near the same airport in Queens, and went to a public school near my home, which was 95% African American.
I was then selected into the "SP" (Special Progress) program for academically gifted children and was bussed out of my neighborhood, to a predominantly white Junior High School, where I was confronted by race riots. So was Holder. Like Holder, I was accepted into one of New York City's special High Schools for gifted students. The commute for me took almost 2 hours, one way, and that school too was predominantly white.
STRADDLING TWO WORLDS
Holder learned at a young age to navigate different worlds. Until he was 10 years old, he attended a public school in his neighborhood. Then, in the fourth grade, he was selected to participate in a program for intellectually gifted kids at a school made up of mostly white students. "After fourth grade, my schools were largely white, predominantly Jewish," recalls Holder. "But where I lived was overwhelmingly ... black. So I had my foot in both worlds."
When it came time to choose a high school, his white classmates were all taking an exam to enter the city's elite public schools, Brooklyn Technical High School, Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School. Holder's score was good enough to get him into Stuyvesant -- an hour-and-a-half commute away in Manhattan. His decision to attend Stuyvesant puzzled his neighborhood friends, who opted for schools in Queens.
I too was surrounded by Jewish students. And like them, I took a day off from school to audition for a special high school. But unlike them, I was given a "Blue Referral" card (sent to the principals office and given detention), as were the other 7 black students in the special program, who dared to take a day off to apply to special high schools. We were charged with "cutting classes". The white kids were given honors at graduation. But I was accepted, and so were my black friends, much to the chagrin of our racist principal and home room teachers.
But it wasn't easy leaving the neighborhood to venture off into a new world. I can also remember being ridiculed by the neighborhood kids, when I opted out of going to the local Andrew Jackson High School, and left the hood for the exciting adventure at the High School of Music and Arts. But here our stories diverge. Music and Arts had teachers who were pretty radical, and the student body of artists and musicians was welcoming.
Holder's experience at Stuyvesant HS was not like mine:
Holder initially second-guessed himself. He didn't like his teachers and felt overwhelmed by Stuyvesant's academic demands. But his mother pushed him to keep at it. Quickly Holder learned not only to accept his dual existence but to thrive in it. At Stuyvesant, where he was eventually selected as captain of the basketball team, he earned an academic scholarship. Many years later, he thanked his mother for giving him the confidence he needed. "The sense my mother imbued in me was that I was capable, that I could compete," wrote Holder in a 1998 essay. "She told me that things were not necessarily going to be easy for me because I was black, but that was just something I had to deal with, and whether fair or unfair, it could not be used as an excuse."
He also credited his West Indian heritage. In a 1993 profile in Legal Times (a sibling publication of The American Lawyer), Holder discussed a college essay he wrote about West Indians. Researching it, he said, helped him understand the origins of his personal drive. "It gave me an interesting perspective on how West Indians were viewed by native blacks [in the U.S.]," he said. "They were called the Black Jews because they were shopkeepers and strivers -- and they were resented."
In many ways, his experience mirrors that of Colin Powell's, also the son of West Indian immigrant parents. Though my parents were not West Indian, they also valued education, since both were teachers. If it was a choice between buying a new car, and making sure I went to college, the car didn't get bought.
In 1969 Holder entered college at Columbia, where again he kept one foot on the largely white campus and another in the black community that surrounded it. Holder "bloomed," says his mother, in the intellectual, political and cultural richness of Columbia. He played freshman basketball, took in shows at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, spent Saturdays mentoring local kids. He also participated in campus protests, including one that involved taking over the dean's office. (Holder was forgiven for the incident and is now a trustee of the university.) One college friend recalls that Holder could "talk trash" on the basketball court just as quick as he could "go Ivy League on you."
Mr. Holder then attended Columbia Law School from which he graduated in 1976. While in law school he clerked at the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund and the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division.
Upon graduating from Columbia Law School, Mr. Holder moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the Department of Justice as part of the Attorney General’s Honors Program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section in 1976 and was tasked to investigate and prosecute official corruption on the local, state and federal levels. While at the Public Integrity Section, Mr. Holder participated in a number of prosecutions and appeals involving such defendants as the Treasurer of the state of Florida, the Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, a local judge in Philadelphia, an Assistant United States Attorney in New York City, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a "capo" in an organized crime family in Pennsylvania.
The Public Integrity attorneys were charged with prosecuting high-level corruption cases, often involving respectable public figures. Among those Holder helped to prosecute were former South Carolina congressman John W. Jenrette--in the notorious "Abscam" case in the late 1970s--and a Philadelphia judge who accepted monetary gifts to "fix" cases. The list of people Holder prosecuted while with Public Integrity included Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, politicians, organized crime figures, and even a fellow Justice Department lawyer. The job Holder thought he would stay in for two years consumed one dozen years of his life.
Jet Magazine reported on August 16, 1993
Eric Holder Jr. picked for U.S. attorney post in Washington, D.C
In a major move to prove diversity in federal employment, President Clinton named 42-year-old D.C. Superior Court Judge Eric Holder, Jr. as the first Black U.S. attorney in the nation's capital, often described as the new crime capital.
Howard University law school cronies of the late Thurgood Marshall often joked that it would be easier for him to be nominated a U.S. Supreme Court Justice than it would for him to be picked the U.S. attorney in Washington, a predominantly Black city.
For decades, Black legal groups campaigned to open up the critical post but without success. Former President Jimmy Carter was urged to name the late civil rights lawyer Wiley Branton to the post - to no avail.
He was recommended for the post by Eleanor Holmes Norton.
His accomplishments as United States Attorney General:
In 1993, President Clinton nominated Mr. Holder to become the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He was confirmed later that year and served as the head of the largest United States Attorneys office in the nation for nearly four years. He was the first black person to serve in that position. As U.S. Attorney, Mr. Holder created a Domestic Violence Unit to more effectively handle those types of tragic cases, implemented a community prosecution project to work hand in hand with residents and local government agencies in order to make neighborhoods safer, supported a renewed enforcement emphasis on hate crimes so that criminal acts of intolerance would be severely punished, developed a comprehensive strategy to improve the manner in which agencies handled cases involving the abuse of children, launched a community outreach program to reconnect the U.S. Attorney’s office with the citizens it serves, revitalized the Victim/Witness Assistance Program to better serve those individuals who were directly affected by crime and developed "Operation Ceasefire", an initiative designed to reduce violent crime by getting guns out of the hands of criminals.
In April, 1997, President Clinton nominated Mr. Holder to be the Deputy Attorney General. He was confirmed by a Senate vote of 100 to 0 and was sworn in as the Deputy Attorney General in July, 1997. He was the first African-American to serve as Deputy Attorney General. In that position Mr. Holder was responsible for the conduct of the day to day operation of the Department of Justice and supervised all of the Department’s litigating, enforcement and administrative components in both civil and criminal matters. He began the Department’s Children Exposed to Violence Initiative and made Department priorities enforcement efforts in health care fraud, computer crimes and software piracy. Mr. Holder successfully worked to fund and expand nationwide the concept of community prosecution which seeks to connect more directly prosecutors with the citizens they serve. At the request of the President, Mr. Holder began and directed Lawyers for One America a multi-agency, public/private partnership designed to diversify the legal profession and to increase the amount of pro bono work done by the nation’s attorneys. At the Department of Justice, he began the Eight Point Plan to increase and retain the number of minority and female attorneys in the organization. As Deputy Attorney General Mr. Holder was the highest ranking black person in law enforcement in the history of the United States. He then served briefly as Acting Attorney General under President Bush pending the confirmation of Attorney General Ashcroft.
(my bold)
In 1997 Holder gave a keynote address for African-American History month at the Library of Congress, where he shared his views of our troubled racial history, and how that history has left its mark on the black community:
U.S. Attorney Urges Responsible Behavior Eric Holder Delivers African American Keynote
Speaking to a packed Mumford Room audience, the 46-year-old Mr. Holder said, "In discussing black history we must be cognizant of its current nature."
"History can be used as a tool to understand a present that at times seems frightening and illogical, "The seeds of our inner cities' present distress can be found in the way this nation has dealt with its black inhabitants over the years. But this same population has done much to contribute to its present situation.
Similar to an address Barack gave to an black congregation, Holder brought up the same themes:
Mr. Holder focused on two major problems in the black community: the AIDS epidemic and the surge of unwed, teenage mothers. "Sexual conduct is voluntary and can be controlled. ... By being more responsible these problems could be largely cured."
Citing statistics showing that unwed women are giving birth to 67 percent of the black babies born in the United States, he noted an even more serious situation in some parts of Washington, where 80 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. "This problem tears at the very fabric of the black community."
"There is a direct link between poverty and the social problems that so bedevil us and at least part of the poverty problem is self-inflicted and can be controlled by self-restraint." He continued, "We focus on women as if they created children without the assistance of men," and recalled that when he was a Superior Court judge, almost every young black criminal defendant who came before him had no father in his life. He said that boys need male role models in the home if they are to grow up to be responsible men. And he urged African American men to embrace family values.
Turning to the 1960s and '70s, he said, "Today, we would not recognize the America that existed before the civil rights movement." He reminded his audience of the earlier years of separate facilities, segregated schools, poll taxes and, worst of all, the exclusion of blacks from the mainstream of American life. He referred to this period as "American apartheid."
He spoke of Black History as American History:
The fact that America needs an African American History Month testifies to another problem. American history, as taught in schools today, is "divorced" from the true role played by blacks, he said. "Americans should begin to focus on the history of black citizens. Recognition of major black figures must become part of the standard curriculum in our schools." Although African Americans by the thousands faced lynchings, racial discrimination and economic hardship, they have achieved notable and significant accomplishments. Mr. Holder cited the names of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King Jr., Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Ralph Ellison, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson and Rosa Parks, among others.
"We owe them all a debt of gratitude... We must appreciate and acknowledge our unique black past."
10 years later he attended Barack Obama's historic speech on race, in Philadelphia:
In Philadelphia, Holder met up with Obama; his wife, Michelle; campaign adviser Jarrett; and a few others in the greenroom at the National Constitution Center. No one except for Obama had seen the speech, which the candidate finished writing that morning. Holder, with a knot in his stomach, was surprised that Obama was so interested in his assessment of the men's college basketball tournament.
Obama's speech, which tied together thoughts and feelings that Holder had on the subject of race but had never so eloquently articulated, moved Holder to tears. As the candidate spoke, Holder says, he thought about his wife's sister Vivian Malone Jones, who was one of the first two African-Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama in the face of opposition from Gov. George Wallace.
He also thought about his dad, an immigrant from Barbados. "He's a guy who came here as a kid -- 13, 14, 15 years old, something like that -- and who loved this country I think in a way that only an immigrant can," says Holder. "And yet, you know, he tried to join the Army Air Corps. And the thing that sticks in my mind is, they laughed at him. While he's [serving] in World War II and he's in his uniform in Oklahoma, he can't get served at a luncheon counter. He has to stand up in a train coming back from Fort Bragg to Harlem. While he's in uniform. My father loved America, but he had that anger that Barack talked about."
The article I have cited quite liberally from:
Making History With Obama goes on to document:
THE CLINTON-ERA POLITICAL TIGHTROPE AND THE MARC RICH CASE
THE DECISION TO SUPPORT OBAMA
and makes some distinctions between Holder being appointed by a Clinton, and actually being a "Clintonista".
Suggest you give it a read.
I will be delighted to see Eric Holder as Attorney General if he is confirmed.