If they’re being honest, most political reporters would admit that the best writing does not always appear on the political page of a newspaper. You’re more likely to find it on the sports page, or the obituary page.
And so it was on the obit page of the New York Times that I learned the inspiring story of Bertie Bowman, the longest-serving Black congressional staffer, who died on Oct. 25 at 92.
Bowman was only 13, still working the fields with his shareholder parents in South Carolina, when Sen. Burnet Maybank (D-S.C.) made an unscheduled stop in his hometown. He boldly asked the senator if he could shake his hand if he ever made it to Washington. Marbank agreed, and a few weeks later Bowman ran away from home and hopped a train to Washington. He slept a couple of nights in Union Station, then walked to the Capitol. Maybank was so impressed he got the teenager a job sweeping floors for $2 a week — which the senator paid out of his own pocket. And thus began a remarkable career.
Bowman spent the next two decades in “underground” jobs in the Capitol: working as a janitor, shining shoes and helping out in the Senate barber shop. His big break came in 1965 when Sen. William J. Fulbright (D-Ark.) hired him as a clerk, and then coordinator, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Bowman’s duties included welcoming witnesses, making sure microphones were working, keeping senators on track with their questions and training and overseeing interns — including a young man from Hope, Ark., named Bill Clinton. As the Times reports, “the two bonded over a shared love of Elvis Presley and could sometimes be spied singing, and trying to dance, along to the music.” Clinton wrote the forward to Bowman’s 2008 memoir.
Maybank, Fulbright and Clinton weren’t the only fellow Southerners to help Bowman along the way. Remarkably, so did two avowed segregationists, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond and North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms. When Bowman was rejected for admission to Howard University, Thurmond personally called the university president and secured Bowman a slot. Later, when Bowman left the committee for a few years to manage his father-in-law’s limousine service, then-Foreign Affairs Chairman Helms called and invited him back.
As he demonstrated on his retirement in 2021, Bowman acquired a good deal of personal and political skills in his nearly six decades working for the committee. Asked which of the committee members was his favorite, Bowman sagely replied: “The committee has 27 members. All of them were my favorites.”
What a great story. And what a tribute to the unsung heroes, thousands of federal employees like Bertie Bowman, dedicated public servants, who keep our government agencies working, year in, year out, no matter who’s in the White House. We are all in their debt.
There must be some way to honor Bertie Bowman and his fellow federal employees — and there is. As Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has recently argued, it’s a disgrace that while so many monuments to Confederate leaders have been taken down in the South, here in Washington there’s still a Senate Office Building named for known racist Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga.).
It’s time for the United States Senate to catch up with the rest of the country. And there’s no better way to do that than to remove the name of the Russell Senate Office Building and replace it with the “Bertie Bowman Senate Office Building.” Come on, senators. Fetterman’s right. Do it now!
Press hosts “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”