Edward Ross "Ed" Roybal
(February 10, 1916 – October 24, 2005) was an American
politician. He served for thirty years as a Democratic representative of the
30th and later the 25th districts of California
, and was a member of the Los Angeles City Council for
thirteen years.
Early life
Roybal was
born into a Hispanic family that traced its
roots in Albuquerque,
New Mexico
back hundreds of years, to the Roybals who settled the area prior to the founding of
Santa
Fe
. In 1922, a railroad strike prevented his
father from being able to work, and Roybal moved with his family to
the East Los Angeles
neighborhood of Boyle Heights
, where he attended local public schools, graduating
from Roosevelt High
School in 1933. After graduation, Roybal joined the
Civilian Conservation
Corps, a
New Deal program that provided
him with an experience that both reflected and reinforced his
developing commitment to public service.
After serving in the
CCC, Roybal attended the University of
California, Los Angeles
, and later studied law at Southwestern
University.
In 1942, Roybal began work as a public educator with the California
Tuberculosis Association. His work there, however, was interrupted
by a stint in the
Army, where he
worked as an accountant for an infantry unit. Upon returning home,
he began work as director of health education for the Los Angeles
County Tuberculosis and Health Association, a position he held
until 1949.
Local politics
In 1947, Roybal decided to run for the 9th District Seat of the
Los Angeles City Council,
then held by
Parley Parker
Christensen.
The district, which included Boyle Heights,
Bunker Hill,
Civic Center
, Chinatown, Little
Tokyo
, and the Central Avenue
corridor, was then 45% White, 34% Latino, 15% African American, and
6% "other" residents. Roybal, unable to secure a large
enough portion of the vote from outside the Latino community to
overcome Christianson's support across ethnic lines and from
organized labor in particular, lost the election. In 1949, Roybal
teamed with local organizer
Fred Ross and
a group of people who had supported his earlier campaign to form
the
Community Service
Organization (CSO), which tied together a variety of religious,
political, and organized labor groups to fight local
discrimination. The organization,
which organized get-out-the-vote drives, did not explicitly endorse
candidates, but Roybal's presence as president of the organization
and the personal endorsements of many of its members helped form a
groundswell of support that contributed to Roybal's victory. In
1960 Roybal helped organize the
Mexican American
Political Association (MAPA) and served as its first president
from 1960 to 1962.
Taking office in 1949, Roybal began a long career in public office;
he served as councilman from 1949 to 1962 and was president
pro-tempore in his last term. As councilman, he became a figure of
great importance, particularly on issues facing the local Latino
community.
Most famously, he opposed the land swap that
allowed for Dodger
Stadium
to be built in the largely Mexican-American community of Chavez Ravine. He was also critical of
House Un-American
Activities Committee and the politics of
McCarthyism, voting against the Subversive
Registration Bill, which required written
loyalty oaths. After his departure, the City
Council went 23 years without a Latino until
Richard Alatorre's election in 1985.
National politics and later life
During his time in the City Council, Roybal, as a prominent young
Democrat, received encouragement to run for higher office. In 1954,
he lost an effort to become
Lieutenant
Governor. Running in 1958 against
Ernest
Debs for a seat on the
Los Angeles County Board
of Supervisors, Roybal lost a bitterly-contested election in
which he held a slim lead on election night, but lost after four
recounts gave the election to Debs, fueling suspicions of
voter fraud.
Despite this, Roybal ran for Congress in
1962, winning election in the 25th District, an area that included
his native Boyle Heights, the larger East Los Angeles area,
Downtown
, and parts of Hollywood
. Beginning his term in 1963, he became the
first Latino Congressperson from California since the 1879 election
of
Romualdo Pacheco.
As Congressman, Roybal was generally known for a low-key
legislative style. In his first term, he served on the
Interior and Insular
Affairs Committee and the Post Office Committee. In his next
term, he served on the Foreign Affairs Committee and on the
Veteran's Affairs Committee.
Beginning in 1971, he served on the
House Appropriations
Committee for more than two decades and authored a number of
bills, many of which were not universally popular, which offered
support for groups he saw as disenfranchised; many of his actions
were on behalf of veterans, the elderly, and Mexican-Americans. In
1967 he wrote the first bill giving federal support to
bilingual education, creating
specialized language instruction for immigrant populations. As
Chairman of the
House
Select Committee on Aging, he led a successful campaign to
restore $15 million in funding the low-cost health programs for
senior citizens and an expanded public housing program for seniors.
In 1982 he worked to preserve the
Meals
on Wheels program and veterans' preferences in hiring. In the
early 1980s, against the wishes of many of his own constituents, he
argued for expanded funding for
AIDS
research.
In 1976 he became a founder of the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus
(CHC) and later co-founded the [(National Association of Latino
Elected and Appointed Officials)] (
NALEO). In
1986, as chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, he led the
unsuccessful opposition to the
Simpson-Mazzoli Act.
In 1978, Roybal was involved in a vote-buying scheme, known as the
Koreagate scandal, in which he admitted to
lying to the
House Ethics
Committee about accepting a $1,000 gift from a South Korean
lobbyist,
Tongsun Park. After requests
by Hispanic leaders and testimony from the other two
Representatives accused —
Ronald
Dellums and
Phillip Burton — the
potential censure was reduced to a reprimand (the same sanction
given the other two Representatives involved). Undeterred, he ran
for reelection the same year and won 70% of the vote.
Roybal retired in 1993 after thirty years in office. That year,
following redistricting, his daughter
Lucille Roybal-Allard became the
Representative for the 33rd District, which contained part of
Roybal's district, while
Xavier
Becerra, with Roybal's endorsement, won election in 30th
District, which included much of the remaining territory of
Roybal's former 25th District.
At the time of his death, more buildings in Los Angeles were named
after him than any other single person. Among the buildings named
for Roybal are the Edward R.
Roybal Federal Building, located in what had
been his home district in California, and the main campus of the
Center for Disease
Control in Atlanta,
Georgia
. California State University, Los
Angeles
is home to the Edward R. Roybal Institute
for Applied Gerontology.
After
retiring from Congress, Roybal lived the rest of his life in
Pasadena,
California
as one of the deans of local and national politics,
endorsing several candidates in elections throughout the
region.
He died at the age of 89 at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena of
respiratory failure complicated by pneumonia.
Tributes
On March 25, 2008, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of
Education voted to name Central Los Angeles High School #11
(formerly Belmont Learning Center) as
Edward R. Roybal Learning Center. The
school opened on September 3, 2008.
Every February, on occasion of Congressman Edward R. Roybal's date
of birth, The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed
Officials (NALEO) hosts the Edward R. Roybal Legacy Gala
[165541]
in Washington, DC as a tribute to the many contributions the late
Congressman made to the nation, to NALEO and to the NALEO
Educational Fund, of which he is Founder Emeritus.
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