By JOCK MILLS
Former LAHS Student
Portland Oregon
When I look back on the 20 years of my formal education, one high school teacher – Mary Louise Williams – stands out in shaping my life. Although I certainly didn’t call her by her first name, “Mary Lou” was a force to behold in E-wing where she presided over many activities and taught social studies. In 1971, I was in her sophomore American history class.
It was not so much the subject – it was the energy she created. She didn’t just spark my interest in politics and public policy – she ignited a flame in me that launched a career that took me to Washington, DC as a staffer for a member of Congress, and eventually to Oregon, where for 40 years I was involved in state and federal natural resource, environmental, and higher education issues in a variety of positions. Although this journey may be interesting to me, what has been occupying my thoughts since learning of her death is the inspiration that she created for hundreds, if not thousands, of other students over her career with the Los Alamos Public Schools.
The lesson I remember most from Ms. Williams stems from a simulation of the US Senate during the antebellum period. She chose me to deliver the basics of Daniel Webster’s speech on the floor of the Senate on January 20, 1830. Of course, you remember the storied Hayne-Webster debate regarding “states’ rights.” If not, I’ll remind you: the debate began over revenues derived from public lands flowing to the federal government. It was notable for foreshadowing the Civil War 30 years later.
Senator Robert Hayne (rhymes with “pain”), a Democrat from South Carolina, argued in favor of states’ rights, claiming that the Republican revenue schemes were “consolidating” power at the federal level. The money should go to the states. Webster, a notorious Republican speechifier from Massachusetts mocked the use of the word “consolidation” and argued in favor of federal supremacy over the states because it achieved the greatest good for all. Looming in the background was the issue of slavery and the future of the union.
Until the other day when I looked into it, the only thing I remembered about any of this is stressing over why the word “consolidation” appeared so frequently in Webster’s speech. I honestly didn’t know what the word meant in this context. In fact, I didn’t even know how to pronounce it. And because I never looked it up, or sought help from others, I bungled its pronunciation – repeatedly – on the day of my delivery. Over 50 years later, I still recall Ms. Williams as being appropriately tepid in her feedback regarding my performance.
Fortunately, this was not my only experience with Mary Lou. In fact, you didn’t need to enroll in her class to benefit from her activism. In the spring of 1971, a year after the first Earth Day, Mary Lou convinced the high school administration to scrap all the classes for an entire day in order to devote time to environmental and cultural issues. The “Give a Damn Day” involved seminars and presentations regarding a wide range of topics, including an inspirational performance in the auditorium by Nat Simmons, a local African American actor. Two memorable presentations for me involved one on “no impact” back packing (which I still do), and a student presentation on the avant garde works of Erik Satie.
The following year, Mary Lou and her colleagues in the social studies department energized a student-run political convention, which involved an evening keynote speech in Griffith Gymnasium by an Albuquerque State Senator, followed by a full day of students acting out the roles of conventioneers and candidates during the 1972 presidential primary election. As reported in the 1972 La Loma yearbook, “Some students said the convention was too much like the real thing.”
As for the Hayne-Webster debate, after learning of Mary Lou’s death, I relived my 10th grade experience and looked up Webster’s speech by using the only two things I could remember from the assignment: it involved Daniel Webster and it contained the word “consolidation.” The speech popped up immediately – the debate is included in the minutes of the US Senate. I spent an hour or two reading both Hayne’s and Webster’s speeches. While I’ve known how to pronounce “consolidation” ever since I bungled it in 1971, now more than fifty years later, I have a much better grasp of what both Webster and Hayne saw in the word. To Webster, it meant that gathering power and resources made the union stronger and more able to serve the people. Hayne saw “consolidation” to be corruptive, unaccountable, and threatening to the activities of individual states, which were closer to the people.
Rereading those speeches today causes me to question my stance on states’ rights. For all my life, I’ve sided with Webster – to operate as a true union, unifying and gathering resources at the federal level can best serve the people. Furthermore, as used in 1830 and well beyond, “states’ rights” connotated racists who supported slavery and repression. Federal pre-emption relates directly to milestones in my career: a House floor statement I wrote on the establishment of federal grain reserves, a lawsuit I was involved in regarding the governance of federal hydro-projects, and advocacy I did for federal funding for a wide range of research activities.
As a result of the events over the last year, my perspective has changed – nearly 200 years after their delivery, Hayne’s words regarding states’ rights now ring true to me:
I am opposed, therefore, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers, or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union over the states, or the people of the states; and, most of all, I am opposed to those partial distributions of favors, whether by legislation or appropriation, which has a direct and powerful tendency to spread corruption through the land; to create an abject spirit of dependence; to sow the seeds of dissolution; to produce jealousy among the different portions of the Union, and finally to sap the very foundations of the government itself. . . .
So, what does all this have to do with Mary Lou?
First, even if she is no longer among us, she will always be teaching. Her memory drove me to review that debate. I finally completed the assignment she gave me in 1971 in a satisfactory manner. I will always remember what “consolidation” means, and I now see why it’s complicated.
Second, Mary Lou will always be inspirational. I think of her now, as I spend my time as a retiree fighting the local transit agency which for the last three years has sought to remove a local bus line from the core of three neighborhoods in Northeast Portland. From whom did I first learn about canvassing? And citizen activism? And environmentalism? It was Mary Lou.
Third, she taught us that history weaves its way through current events and that our perspective on history should not be static. Concepts change. I used to think the states’ rights people were wrong; now I’m one of them.
Over the last several days as I’ve gone on with my winter activities, I’ve thought of Mary Lou as the historian, activist, theatre enthusiast, and skier. Some years ago, I reached out to her over e-mail and related the positive impact she’d had on my life. She remembered me and was gracious. Neither of us mentioned my mediocre performance in the Webster-Hayne debate. We lost touch after that.
It wasn’t until I heard of her passing and began to write these words that I fully put together how important Mary Lou was to me. Tomorrow I will be attending a community meeting with my state senator to advocate for that bus. She will be there too, urging me on.