- At the height of the Eisenhower years, a newly elected Black congressman arrived in Washington, practicing a politics of strategic moderation.

Today's guest chronicles the life of Charles C. Diggs, Jr., his often overlooked contribution to the civil rights era that followed, and his ultimate political fall.

He's Marion Orr, this week, on "Story in the Public Square."

(lively thoughtful music) (lively thoughtful music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Marion Orr, the Frederick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy at Brown University.

He's also the author of a new book, "House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs, Jr."

Marion, thank you so much for being with us.

- Oh, thank you for having me.

- You know, and congratulations on the book.

I mentioned to you in the green room that I'm a little bit embarrassed as a historian that I did not know any of the story of Charles Diggs.

Give us a quick overview of the book, and then we'll get into it in some depth.

- Yeah.

Well, Charles Diggs was a congress member from Detroit, Michigan.

He served from 1955 to 1980, and I document in the book that he was perhaps the most consequential Black American ever to serve in the Congress.

He did so much.

He arrived in Congress in 1955, and he never looked back.

He is credited with being the person who pushed and restored home rule to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

He was the founder, the founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is today perhaps the most powerful Black political organization in the country.

It is a caucus of all 62 members who serve in the United States Congress.

Finally, Diggs was significant in the American anti-apartheid movement.

Many people link that movement to the 1980s and 1990s.

My book documents that Diggs was ahead of his time.

He was talking about apartheid in the '50s and the '60s.

So when you look at his work, his contributions, his persistence in Congress, he just did a lot.

And when you add it all up, he was just significantly consequential.

- You describe him practicing strategic moderation.

- Yeah.

- As a political moderate, I've often found it a challenge to excite people about moderation.

What did he do?

How did he employ that as a tactic, as a strategy in his legislative agenda and his public life?

- Yeah.

Well, let me be clear on what I mean by the politics of strategic moderation.

Today, politicians tend to identify themselves as moderates in order to distinguish themselves from the extreme wings of their parties.

When I look at Diggs and talk about his politics of strategic moderation, what I'm talking about is his approach to building coalitions in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.

Diggs firmly believed that if Black Americans, who were a numerical majority and a racial minority, were going to achieve on the areas of civil rights, that you had to have the broad spectrum of America supporting its cause.

So Diggs was a strategic moderate in that he worked hard to bring in conservatives, to bring in radicals, and he worked with these people throughout his years in Congress.

So what I'm saying is Diggs, first of all, was a race man.

He was strongly for civil rights.

He stood up against bigotry and discrimination, but at the same time, he knew how to operate in the Congress.

He knew how to build coalitions.

And one of the things about this guy is he was a strategic coalition builder, and I think it really helped him to succeed in Congress.

- So you write in the book that he was stunningly effective in Congress, which he was.

But today, he is an almost forgotten freedom warrior.

How could such a man of such providence, prominence, rather, be forgotten now?

And by the way, your book will change that, but until now, how could that possibly have happened?

- Yeah.

Well, it's a couple of things.

One, I think it is the way in which historians and journalists have focused on a particular group of Black leaders, if you will.

We typically hear a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perhaps Malcolm X and others.

My book is really a sort of corrective history to say that we have really ignored one of the most fundamental, most important individuals who served in the Congress.

Diggs was also overshadowed by Congressmember Adam Clayton Powell.

He was from Harlem.

He was flamboyant.

He was a Black radical, and Powell typically captured a lot of media attention during the period Diggs was in office.

So I say in part that the narrowness in which historians and journalists have sort of focused on a few Black leaders, and secondly, the extent to which Diggs was overshadowed by Powell and perhaps others.

Diggs was a quiet, unassuming character who put his head down and worked very hard.

And being quiet and unassuming, you can kind of get lost in the Congress.

But he was effective, and he was very, very consequential.

- So he was elected in 1954 to the U.S.

House of Representatives.

Tell us about that election, how he pulled that off, and what greeted him when he was sworn in, in Washington.

- Yeah.

Congressman Diggs is from Detroit.

His family, his parents, migrated to Detroit as a part of the Great Migration.

His father and mother formed a very prosperous funeral home, which they named the House of Diggs, hence the title of the book.

The House of Diggs Funeral Home became very, very popular in Black Detroit.

In fact, if you died in Detroit and you were African American in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, you were likely to be buried by the Diggs family.

They buried more than half of the Blacks who died in Michigan in the '50s, quite frankly.

- That's stunning.

- Yeah.

- Yes, yes.

And the father, Charles Diggs, Sr., would parlay the success of the business, the funeral home, into electoral politics, eventually winning a seat in the Michigan State Senate in 1936.

In 1943/44, the father got in trouble.

In fact, he was arrested and served 15 months in state prison, and Diggs would succeed his father, the son, in the Michigan State Senate, and three years afterwards would run for a seat in Congress, defeating a sitting incumbent in a district that at the time was 60% white.

So Diggs was the first Black American ever to get elected in a congressional district that was majority white when he ran.

And again, once he got elected in '54, he never looked back.

- Well, so very early in his time in Congress, Emmett Till was lynched.

And one of the more... The entire book is powerful, but the description of Diggs traveling to the trial of the accused murderers is remarkable.

Talk to us a little bit about the courage, though, that that took.

- Sure.

- To go to Mississippi and to sit in that courtroom and listen to that testimony.

- Yeah.

Well, as you said, Diggs got elected in '54.

He comes to Congress in January of 1955, and in the summer of 1955, August, September of '55, there's the trial in Mississippi of the two white men who were accused of killing Emmett Till.

Emmett Till was the 14-year-old Chicago boy who went to visit his relatives in the Delta in Mississippi, and he was murdered and lynched.

The two men was on trial down in Mississippi, and Diggs, again, he's from Detroit, Michigan, decided that he would go to the trial to observe the trial.

- And his personal safety was at risk, even going there.

- This is true.

Because anybody Black in Mississippi during this period was in danger.

And here comes Diggs, you know, saying he's gonna observe the trial.

And he wrote about the five days in which he stayed in Mississippi.

And what he said was he was frightened throughout.

It was a harrowing experience because of the racial tensions that were down there.

And so Diggs went there.

He was 32 years old, a young person going to Mississippi to really stand up for Black men, Black women, and for civil rights.

And let me add, he had a major impact on the trial in two significant ways.

Number one, the Black witnesses who came forward were frightened.

They were frightened because they knew their lives were in jeopardy by accusing two white men of murdering a Black person.

The Black witnesses who testified at the trial later told reporters, friends, and relatives that they got the courage to step forward in that trial and to point an accusing finger at the two white men because Congressman Diggs was sitting there in the courtroom.

They looked out and they saw this reassuring person, this powerful Black congress member.

And they are quoted as saying that Diggs's presence, Diggs's presence at the trial helped him get through their testimony.

And the second thing that Diggs did was important in the trial, is that his presence brought additional media attention.

The fact that he was just elected to Congress in 1954, just arrived in 1955.

The fact that he was a new Black congressman.

Let me just step back and say he was only one of three Black members of Congress at the time.

And so Diggs's presence in the courtroom was significant for the witnesses, and his presence in Mississippi was there because his presence heightened the media attention around what was happening at the trial and civil rights in Mississippi and in the South.

- Emmett Till was, obviously... What you've just described was a monumental milestone in the civil rights movement.

- Yes.

- Which brings me to Martin Luther King, Jr.

He and Diggs knew each other and more than that.

Tell us about that relationship which was so important.

- Yes.

It was a friendship, a brotherhood centered around the struggle for civil rights.

When Dr.

King started the Montgomery boycott movement down in Alabama in, I believe, '56, Diggs used his House of Diggs radio program... The funeral home had a radio program, and he used the radio program, Wayne, to raise money for the boycott.

Again, he's in Detroit, the boycott is in Alabama.

He raised $10,000 to support the boycott.

And he would go down to Alabama and deliver the money directly and put it in the hands of Dr.

King.

That began the friendship and relationship of the two men.

One, the son of a preacher, Dr.

King, the other, the son of a funeral director.

And those two men, Diggs and King, would work together on civil rights issues until King gets assassinated in 1968.

They became so close that Diggs and Dr.

King began to talk to one another in first-name basis.

You got letters with Diggs writing Dr.

King and referring to him as "Martin" and "Marty."

(Wayne laughs) And only close friends and relatives of Dr.

King called him "Marty" or "Martin."

This, I think, is an indication of the closeness the two men had.

- Absolutely.

- In addition, if you look at Digg's FBI file, and I happen to obtain the FBI files of Diggs, the FBI makes the point in their surveillance that Diggs was, quote, "a close associate," unquote, of Dr.

King.

And they would work on issues in civil rights.

Diggs would go to Selma, Alabama, in 1965 to help Dr.

King, when the voting rights movement down there.

King will eventually come to Detroit and do a testimonial dinner to raise money for Diggs, which he contributed to the SCLC, the organization that King formed.

So they were, as I say in the book, brothers in the struggle, and they were close friends until Dr.

King was murdered in April of 1968.

- How did you come to write this book?

Like, of all the scholarship that you could undertake, why this particular life?

Why this biography?

- Yeah.

I knew about Diggs and his contributions.

I did my undergraduate work in political science at a small Black college called Savannah State University.

And my professor there, a man named Hanes Walton.

Hanes, like the T-shirt maker Hanes, and his last name was Walton.

And Professor Walton taught many of the courses at Savannah State in political science.

And Diggs came up often in Professor Walton's courses.

So I learned about Diggs and his contributions when I was, like, 18 years old.

I would go on to graduate school in political science, and I would learn still more about this man's contribution.

And I discovered that no one, no historian, no journalist, no political scientist had taken the time to write a book on Diggs.

I discovered that he left his papers at Howard University, lots of papers, (Jim and Wayne laughing) 750 boxes of his congressional correspondence.

- Holy smokes.

His business papers, personal papers were left at Howard University.

And as a political scientist, I immediately saw lots of data.

That's good data.

(Jim laughs) And that's how I started to write the book.

That's why I wrote it.

I knew this guy was significant.

I knew he was consequential.

And no one else would do it, and I said, "I gotta do it."

(laughs) - So you're talking about those boxes, and I would note there were 44 pages of notes on your research spanning almost 10 years.

Talk about that.

That is a long time to write a book.

The result, of course, is stunning.

How did you keep the faith, as it were, for those 10 years?

- Yeah.

Well, I was sustained in part by my wife and daughter, who helped me.

(group laughing) They would pull me away when I'm too much into Diggs.

And so I dedicated the book to my wife, Ramona, and our daughter, Willia.

But you are right, Wayne.

I had to go through all of those papers that Diggs left there.

- Wow.

- A tremendous amount of work and trying to organize it.

In addition, Diggs was a prolific writer of letters, memoranda, and telegrams to US presidents, cabinet secretaries, and heads of agencies.

So, in addition to the papers at Howard University, Digg's personal papers, I was also able to gather documents from all six of the presidents that he served under.

So I went to the Eisenhower Library, I went to the Kennedy Library, the Nixon Library, the Ford Library, the Carter Library, the Kennedy Library.

All of those libraries had lots of letters and documents about and from Charles Diggs because he was a serious, serious Congress member.

In addition, lots of government documents.

Because he served in Congress, there's lots of government documents from his congressional hearings that he held, his visits to Africa.

And finally, I was able to get the transcripts from his trial.

The book is called "The Rise and Fall of Charles Diggs."

He would have a fall.

So there's a trial.

I have the transcripts, some 1,200 pages of transcripts.

And finally, I obtained Congressman Diggs's FBI file, which is also helpful in figuring out what happened to Diggs at the end.

So it's deeply researched, and it took, as Wayne said, 10 years to do it.

Let me add, I also interviewed his family members and some of the Black Congress members who he served with on Capitol Hill.

- You know, in the interest of time, we can't do justice to the entirety of his life here.

But you mentioned it a couple of times already, his impact on the way Washington thought about Africa as a whole.

- Yes.

- But also apartheid in South Africa.

- [Marion] Yes.

- Talk to us a little bit about the role he played, and you mentioned this already, too.

He started focusing on this at a time when the civil rights journey in the United States was far from complete, but was already thinking about the injustice in South Africa.

- Sure.

- Talk to us about that.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

In 1957, Diggs would take his first trip to Africa.

He was part of the US official delegation to Ghana's independence celebration.

That trip to Africa transformed Diggs.

He became really fixated on Africa, and by the time he would leave Congress, he would be known as "Mr.

Africa."

In 1959, he became the first Black American, the first Black American to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

And he immediately, immediately showed interest in Africa.

In 1969, he became the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on Africa.

And it was through that subcommittee chairmanship on Africa that he would literally galvanize the nation around apartheid in an effort to break the bond between the US government and the South African government.

So Diggs was really talking about and raising questions about America's relationship with South Africa and its apartheid regime back in the '50s and '60s.

And he would eventually become, I'll argue, the titular head of the American anti-apartheid movement.

Let me just add, Diggs became and was the visionary for what would become TransAfrica.

TransAfrica was formed in 1977, and it became this nation's most influential and most powerful anti-apartheid organization, which literally helped bring down the apartheid regime.

South Africa, and few people know this... TransAfrica, rather, was Diggs's vision.

He was arguing in the 1950s that Black Americans should have a lobby organization devoted to Africa, the same way that American Jews had lobby groups focused on Israel.

He was saying this in the 1950s, and in 1977, TransAfrica was formed.

And I documented in this book that TransAfrica was really Diggs's idea and his vision, and he helped make it happen.

- When he started thinking about this in the '50s and '60s, did he see a direct relationship, though, between, you know, the Jim Crow South in the United States and apartheid South Africa?

- Yes, he did.

And I believe Diggs and other Black leaders saw the independence movement in Africa as being a sort of a symbol, or a symbol of what could happen for a civil rights movement in America.

So yes, he constantly connected the civil rights effort here in our country with what was happening in Africa.

- So we only have about a couple of minutes left, but talk about the fall of Diggs.

I mean, it's almost a Shakespearean tragedy.

Tell us about that.

- Yes.

Well, Congressman Diggs will eventually spend seven months in a federal prison.

He got convicted in 1978 on a payroll kickback scheme.

He violated Congress's payroll laws and got caught and went to trial, and was convicted of this payroll scheme.

Essentially, he got into financial trouble.

The House of Diggs Funeral Home collapsed, and the congressman relied on the funeral home to supplement his income.

The congressman had a difficult time managing his finances.

I couldn't figure out why.

He gambled a lot.

Perhaps that's part of it.

So when the funeral home collapsed, he got desperate, and he asked his secretary, "Could I raise your salary?"

And she said, "Yes."

And the salary raise came back to Diggs, and he paid his personal bills with this additional salary.

In 1977, the Justice Department would learn about the payroll scheme and would investigate him and would convict him, and eventually send him to prison.

- So we've got about a minute left here.

You know, as with most lives, it's complexities layered upon layer, so much good, but some very human flaws.

When you sit back and you think about that from, sort of like, an almost meta perspective, what does that tell you about leaders and leadership and the foibles that we all carry?

- Yeah.

Well, for me, it just hammers on what you just said, the complexity of human beings.

We are complex human beings operating in a very complicated world.

Diggs made some very bad personal choices.

He did, and he suffered because of that.

I think in many instances, we don't know him that well because of this.

Nevertheless, it does not take away from his historical contributions to America and to the world.

Yes, complex man, flawed man, but nevertheless, a man who really loved this country, who really wanted this country to live up to its true meaning.

And he worked really hard.

He sacrificed his family; he sacrificed his business for this country and indeed for Africa to be better.

- Marion Orr; the book is "The House of Diggs."

Thank you for spending some time with us today.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit salve.edu/pellcenter, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

(lively thoughtful music) (lively thoughtful music continues) (lively thoughtful music continues) (bright folk music)