David Carliner

Remembering a champion for Washington and for justice

IT'S COINCIDENTAL but no less poignant that David Carliner died during the same week in which the Senate dealt a blow to the District's hopes for congressional representation. Mr. Carliner, after all, was a powerful force in the movement that won home rule. His life story is one of both injustices corrected and wrongs yet to be righted.

Mr. Carliner died Sept. 19 of a heart attack at age 89. A Washington civil rights lawyer who was the son of Jewish immigrants, he spent a lifetime in the cause of the country's disenfranchised -- whether students or immigrants or gays and lesbians or African Americans. He often was ahead of his profession, his race and his country in taking on such causes as abolishing anti-miscegenation laws or pushing for integrated public seating. Once derided as an "agitator," Mr. Carliner told his daughter that the only way to "get the dirt out" was to stir things up.

Nowhere was his passion or his brilliance more apparent than in the fight for Washington to govern itself instead of being under the thumb of a Congress indifferent, or even hostile, to its interests. He knew that his predominantly black home town was denied self-rule because of the prejudice of white Southern Democrats who ruled the House District Committee. Mr. Carliner, chairman of the D.C. Home Rule Committee, was dogged in his efforts, unwilling to be deterred as he pestered for change. He helped devise the strategy that eventually led to reform. The House obstructionists were bypassed when President Lyndon B. Johnson used his executive powers to reorganize federal agencies to give governance to the District. The first step in 1967 was a presidentially appointed mayor and council; in 1974 came direct election by the voters. Mr. Carliner was never satisfied with the limited nature of home rule, but he appreciated the power of incremental change. That should give both hope and resolve to today's reformers.