Hawkins, oldest living ex-congressman, dies at 100

by Matthew Hay Brown

The oldest living former member of the House of Representatives has died, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today. Augustus Freeman “Gus” Hawkins, a Democrat who represented the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from 1963 to 1991, was 100 years old.

“Gus Hawkins was a champion for civil rights and the rights of hard-working men and women,” Pelosi said in a statement. “A leader on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he was instrumental in ensuring that this groundbreaking legislation afforded equal employment to all workers.”

Hawkins defeated Republican Rep. Edgar Willard Hiestand, a member of the John Birch Society, in 1962 to become the first African-American congressman from the West. He would become a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and chair both the House Labor and Education Committee and the House Administration Committee.

Hawkins served in the California State Assembly from 1935 to 1963. In an op-ed piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times over the weekend, writer Susan Anderson said Hawkins “transformed the state’s fair housing and employment laws.”

The title of oldest living former member now passes to 98-year-old Arthur Glenn Andrews, an Alabama Republican who served a single term from 1965 to 1967.