Don Edwards, Longtime South Bay Congressman and Civil Rights Champion, Dies at Age 100

Don Edwards, a champion of civil rights and the environment who represented his native San Jose in Congress for more than three decades, has died at the age of 100.

Edwards' son, retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Len Edwards, told the San Jose Mercury News the former congressman died Thursday evening at his home in Carmel.

"He died peacefully and with a great deal of grace," Len Edwards said. "He died as he lived, an elegant man."

The New York Times summarizes Edwards' record as a lawmaker focused on preserving and expanding civil rights protections:

He entered Congress in 1963, in time to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After becoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, he managed the Equal Rights Amendment on the House floor in 1971 and was the floor manager for all other civil rights bills.

Effective at working with Republicans, among them Hamilton Fish Jr. of New York, he was the chief House architect on civil rights bills through the 1991 law that overturned eight Supreme Court decisions narrowly interpreting the employment rights of women and minorities.

Mr. Edwards was able to work easily with Republicans on rights measures even though they rarely voted alike on anything else. He was an all-out liberal on issues from the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon to the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

He retired in 1994 with a lifetime rating of 97 percent from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, which he headed from 1965 to 1967. In 20 of his 32 years in Congress, he had a 100 percent score.

He said the most important of the civil rights bills he handled was the 1982 extension of the Voting Rights Act. In response to written questions in 2012, he said, “If you can’t vote, you are not a real citizen.”

Edwards was not gentle in his criticism of those in government and the courts who failed to uphold rights guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. In a 1986 op-ed in The New York Times, he argued against President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist to become the tribunal's chief justice. As a Justice Department lawyer, Edwards noted, Rehnquist had proposed a constitutional amendment that would effectively legalize racial discrimination in public schools.

"The Chief Justice of the United States should symbolize the nation's commitment to equal justice under law," Edwards wrote. "William Rehnquist's amendment provides conclusive proof of what his record on the bench has so long suggested -- that he has never accepted the fundamental constitutional principle that no official should engage in invidious discrimination on the basis of race. He is a relic of a shameful era in our history when the law was perverted into an instrument for segregating society. He should not be confirmed to our highest judicial office."

(The Senate later voted 65-33 to confirm Rehnquist.)

Edwards was equally dedicated to environmental causes. The San Jose Mercury News recounts Edwards' role in securing permanent protection for a large swath of southern San Francisco Bay:

Edwards wrote the bill that President Richard Nixon signed in 1972 establishing the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. In setting up the first urban national wildlife refuge in the United States, the law preserved a broad expanse of South Bay wetlands, for fish, wildlife and public recreation -- blocking the type of development that had filled in large sections of San Francisco Bay in prior decades. Congress renamed the 30,000-acre refuge for Edwards in 1995, and he remained a hero to Bay Area environmentalists.

"Back then the bay was something to use -- for sewer outfalls, garbage dumps, anything you didn't want you put in the bay," said Florence LaRiviere, a longtime Palo Alto environmentalist who worked with Edwards in the early 1970s to create the refuge. "He listened to us. Without Mr. Edwards, there would be development right up to the edge of the bay. All of the wonderful wildlife would be gone."

His family said the permanent protection for the South Bay shoreline was something Edwards remained proud of, long after his retirement.

"It's an open area for families to enjoy and for our environment to be saved that will last forever," Len Edwards said. "That to me is the most wonderful gift he could give."

William Donlon "Don" Edwards was born Jan. 6, 1915, in San Jose. Here's the Times again on his early life and the beginning of his congressional career:

He graduated in 1936 from Stanford University, where he starred on the golf team. He played into his 90s. In 1950, he won the Bing Crosby Clambake at Pebble Beach as an amateur teamed with the professional golfer Marty Furgol.

After attending law school at Stanford, he passed the bar in 1939 and became an F.B.I. agent the next year. He joined the Navy in 1942 and served as an intelligence officer ashore and then as a gunnery officer on fast, armed cargo ships.

After being discharged in 1945, he joined his father’s land title firm. But when he divorced his first wife, his father, who disapproved of the divorce, forced him out. So in 1951, Mr. Edwards founded the Valley Title Insurance Company with his second wife. It prospered.

He became politically active in the 1950s, first as president of the California Young Republicans while Earl Warren, a moderate Republican, was governor. “But the Republicans were mostly too conservative,” he said in 2012, “and I was basically liberal. I became disillusioned and moved away from the party.”

When California’s growing population led to the creation of eight new congressional districts in 1962, Mr. Edwards ran in one in San Jose. In a four-way Democratic primary, he received 35.9 percent of the vote and won by 726 votes over Mayor John Stevenson of Fremont. He won the general election easily and never had a close race again.

Edwards married three times and outlived all his wives. His survivors include four sons.