Norton Remembers Governor Mario Cuomo

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released a remembrance of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, whose funeral service was held Tuesday, January 6, 2015.

For Mario Cuomo

"I am among millions of Americans who will not forget three-term governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, who was laid to rest Tuesday. My reasons go beyond his stature as the sage who made poetry out of policy and championed the forgotten middle class and poor in ways that ring especially true today.

I was human rights commissioner of New York City when the governor was a lawyer in Queens, New York. I established a neighborhood stabilization program in multi-ethnic New York neighborhoods in an effort to encourage whites to remain in their communities as African Americans, usually of the same and often higher income, moved in to join them. Real estate operators often used racial blockbusting tactics in ethnic neighborhoods to stimulate high turnover, profiteering from those who lived there and dimming the hopes of others who were trying to move to racially integrated neighborhoods. I met with a number of residents, including Mario Cuomo, not so much as a lawyer, but as an Italian American with the vision to understand each community. I do not think he could have predicted that he would bring that rare vision to represent many more who were reaching for justice and reconciliation.

Mario Cuomo made the New York City Human Rights Commission neighborhood stabilization program one of my most memorable experiences. By the time he became Governor I had moved back to the District of Columbia, my hometown, to become chair of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and had resigned, when Ronald Reagan became President, to become a law professor at Georgetown Law School. Governor Cuomo called me there to ask if I had any interest in returning to New York to work in his administration. We did not discuss any position. The discussion, though, reminded me why it was no surprise that Mario Cuomo had risen from an unknown lawyer in Queens to lead the state – and, had we been more fortunate, our country as well."