{"id":596918,"date":"2023-11-07T17:45:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/press-coming-soon-the-bertie-bowman-senate-office-building\/"},"modified":"2023-11-07T17:45:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T14:45:00","slug":"press-coming-soon-the-bertie-bowman-senate-office-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/press-coming-soon-the-bertie-bowman-senate-office-building\/","title":{"rendered":"#Press: Coming soon: The Bertie Bowman Senate Office Building\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/04\/russell_041322gn_lead.jpg?w=900\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>If they\u2019re being honest, most political reporters would admit that the best writing does not always <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ear on the political page of a <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>paper. You\u2019re more likely to find it on the sports page, or the obituary page.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And so it was on the\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/10\/31\/us\/bertie-bowman-dead.html\">obit page of the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0that I learned the inspiring story of Bertie Bowman, the longest-serving Black congressional staffer, who died on Oct. 25 at 92.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr1_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>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 \u2014 which the senator paid out of his own pocket. And thus began a remarkable career.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bowman spent the next two decades in \u201cunderground\u201d 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bowman\u2019s duties included welcoming witnesses, making sure microphones were working, keeping senators on track with their questions and training and overseeing interns \u2014 including a young man from Hope, Ark., named\u00a0Bill\u00a0Clinton. As the Times reports, \u201cthe two bonded over a shared love of Elvis Presley and could sometimes be spied singing, and trying to dance, along to the music.\u201d Clinton wrote the forward to Bowman\u2019s 2008 memoir.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Maybank, Fulbright and Clinton weren\u2019t 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\u2019s limousine service, then-Foreign Affairs Chairman Helms called and invited him back.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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: \u201cThe committee has 27 members. All of them were my favorites.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s in the White House. We are all in their debt.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"ad-unit ad-unit--mr2_ab\"><\/aside>\n<p>There must be some way to honor Bertie Bowman and his fellow federal employees \u2014 and there is. As Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has recently argued, it\u2019s a disgrace that while so many monuments to Confederate leaders have been taken down in the South, here in Washington there\u2019s still a Senate Office Building named for known racist Sen. Richard Russell (D-Ga.).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time for the United States Senate to catch up with the rest of the country. And there\u2019s no better way to do that than to remove the name of the Russell Senate Office Building and replace it with the \u201cBertie Bowman Senate Office Building.\u201d Come on, senators. Fetterman\u2019s right. Do it now!\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Press\u00a0hosts \u201cThe\u00a0Bill\u00a0Press\u00a0Pod.\u201d He is the author of \u201cFrom the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Copyright 2023 Nexstar <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Media<\/a> Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/news\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/4296961-press-coming-soon-the-bertie-bowman-senate-office-building\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If they\u2019re being honest, most political reporters would admit that the best writing does not always appear on the political page of a newspaper. You\u2019re more likely to find it on the sports page, or the obituary page.\u00a0 And so it was on the\u00a0obit page of the New York Times\u00a0that I learned the inspiring story&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":596919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thehill.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/04\/russell_041322gn_lead.jpg?w=1280","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[117,134343,10574,124783,4947,134345,70588],"class_list":["post-596918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-business","tag-campaign","tag-education","tag-international","tag-opinion","tag-state-watch","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}