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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am honored to join my colleague, Senator Duckworth, to talk about Ed Smith. It is rare that Senators come to the floor and pay tribute to someone who passes away. It doesn't happen every day. And when we have two Senators from the same State here at the same time doing it, it speaks to the quality of the person that we are talking about.

Mr. President, you have been to Chicago, but you may not have toured the whole State of Illinois. It is a different State down south. About 400 miles south of Chicago is a place called Alexander County, and the county seat is Cairo, IL.

Now, most students of geography would say: That is ``Cairo.'' Not to people of southern Illinois; it is ``Cairo'' or ``Cairo.''

It has had quite a history. It is at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, so it was really a hotbed of economic activity for a century. It was a large, bustling town and with a lot of river traffic that made it a very successful town.

Over time, the economy started to slump. Interstate highways took over for rivers, and Cairo was not quite where it should be.

I graduated law school here in Washington in 1969 and went to work for the Lieutenant Governor of our State, Paul Simon. Brandnew lawyer, anxious to be successful and do the right thing, I said to Lieutenant Governor Simon: What do you want me to do? He said: Go to Cairo.

Well, that was quite an assignment in those days because Cairo was in big trouble. It was in trouble because, as the economy started to slump, a lot of the racial tensions in that community started to emerge, and there were terrible instances of violence and a lot of division in the community.

Rallies and parades led to gunshots and arson and evacuation of the white population from that town. Cairo was not another Illinois city; Cairo was the South. It was said by Paul Simon himself that Southern Illinois is a land of grits and gospel music. And it is true.

It is also the land where racial tensions had reached a fevered pitch by the late 1960s. The State's attorney for Alexander County was a man named Peyton Berbling. He could have come right out of the cast of ``To Kill a Mocking Bird,'' a rumpled white suit. And he was head of what was known as the White Hats Organization. That was a thin imitation of the Ku Klux Klan.

He had his boys ``checking out the county'' every day to make sure that someone who was a stranger, a foreigner, didn't linger in his county. It was a terribly racially divided community. And as I said, it led to violence and economic slump.

Fifteen years later, I was in a situation--well, it was more than 15 years later--I was in a situation where a young State Senator from Chicago was coming down to Cairo for the first time. I was bringing him down. And as we traveled in the car the 380 miles, I told him the story of Cairo and the economic problems and the racial problems it had. As an African American, he said later he didn't know what to expect when he got to Cairo.

Well, our destination was the Laborers' International Union headquarters in Cairo, IL, and the president Ed Smith.

So Barack came to that scene, a barbecue in the parking lot, and got out of the car and was shocked to see a Black and White crowd. Men and women, members of the union, friends of the union, African American and White, sitting together, eating a sandwich, and waiting for this candidate from Chicago. He walked around to a hero's welcome from so many people who were supporting his candidacy, including a lot of African-American people who were proud of Barack Obama.

Not that many years later, when Barack was running for President, he pointed to that experience and said: I began to believe the politics of hope could overcome the politics of division.

Who brought that crowd to that parking lot? Who invited us to come down to that barbecue? Who wanted to show us the success of this union? Who wanted to demonstrate the dignity of work way beyond quitting time on Friday afternoon? Ed Smith.

Ed Smith was devoted to the workers in that community in that State. It was his life, and it was his father's life before him. They were legends in the labor movement--not just in Illinois but around the Nation. So when I saw what Ed had done in Cairo and realized how much progress he had made because of the power of his own values and the power of his own being, our friendship was cemented forever.

He passed away last week. I don't have to tell you that those of us in politics meet hundreds if not thousands of people. It is rare to find someone who is consistently smiling--Ed Smith; consistently kind-- Ed Smith; consistently fighting for working people--without exception, Ed Smith. Time and again, that defined his time on Earth.

Like Senator Duckworth said, he really did keep a tally of what he had done for people, and it was a lot of work to do because he helped everyone in every direction. He became eventually not only successful in the Illinois labor movement but was recognized nationally.

He came out here to Washington to be the CEO of Ullico, which is the life insurance company for the laborers union. Ed decided to do something different. He noticed that a lot of predecessors had taken the deposits from the pensions of laborers around the country and invested them in Wall Street projects. Ed said: We are going to do it differently. We are going to invest in good ideas and good projects that create union jobs for my workers.

When it was all over, he had $5 billion in his working fund, investing so that people could go to work and have quality of life.

He was a wonderful man, and I am going to miss him a lot because I counted on him so much. But I know he has created a really idealistic vision of what you can do if you have a mission in life and live faithfully to it. He did that, and he also showed over and over again that he cared about everybody. No one was too small or insignificant. For him, the labor movement was not just a movement; it was a way of life, and he proved it over and over.

So, Betty, his wife, and his great family, thanks for sharing Ed with us. He really made a difference in our lives, as Senator Duckworth and I have said today, and he made a difference in Illinois in the lives of countless thousands of families.

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