The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“IN TRIBUTE TO ANNE FORRESTER, ACTIVIST AND AMBASSADOR” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1377-E1378 on July 11, 2006.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
IN TRIBUTE TO ANNE FORRESTER, ACTIVIST AND AMBASSADOR
______
HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL
of new york
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Anne Forrester, a tireless advocate who gave her life so that others could understand and appreciate the freedoms we exercise daily in America. Ambassador Anne Forrester, who served our Nation as head of the office of Ambassador Andrew Young in the Department of State and then as Ambassador to Mali during the administration of Jimmy Carter, succumbed to pancreatic cancer on June 23, 2006 at her home in New York City. She was memorialized at a service at the National Cathedral in Washington on Saturday, July 8, 2006. A woman of sound moral character and grace, Anne Forrester lived for others and irreversibly changed everyone she met.
Born in Philadelphia in 1941, to a widowed social worker in a country very divided among race lines, Mrs. Forrester knew from experience what it felt to be denied, pushed aside and undervalued. She was a woman, a colored woman with an intellect and courage that extended beyond her small delicate frame. However, despite all of these challenges, she became a pioneer being among one of the first African American women appointed to serve as a United States Ambassador.
Mrs. Forrester is noted not only as one of the first African American women appointed to ambassadorship in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter to Mali but for her contributions to the great movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the struggle for the attainment of civil rights and the resistance to the folly of our engagement in Vietnam. She channeled her displeasure with America's domestic policies to produce change in government through direct action. Later in her career, Anne became the staff director of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa. Her desire to share the hard-won freedoms gained by blacks in America with those in Africa laid the groundwork for a career of service to the people of Africa which replicated her commitment to equality and justice for Blacks in the U.S.
Mrs. Forrester had a special relationship with the continent of Africa. As a young child, she vividly recalled various pleas from missionaries in her church describing a world and place she would later explain and describe in her own words and from her own personal experience. As a student in Bennington College in Vermont, Mrs. Forrester in 1962 made her first trip to Africa, traveling to Uganda with a summer cultural exchange program. She later earned her Masters Degree in African Studies from Howard University in 1968 and her Ph.D from the Union Institute & University in Cincinnati in 1975.
Ambassador Forrester served as a Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Her work for the U.N. was exemplary, exhibiting the true qualities of a humble yet determined civil servant. As an official observer for the U.N., Mrs. Forrester traveled abroad to a variety of locales. Also as a mother and advocate for reform and peace, Mrs. Forrester was a doer whose work in the U.N.'s regional bureau for Africa under Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, now President of Liberia and as a guest scholar at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars garnered a lot of praise and attention.
We all mourn the loss of such a true pioneer, who took positions and voiced her opinion at times when voices of opposition were not welcomed. What I hope people will gain from her life is that anything is truly possible and that you can aspire to achieve no matter how dire the situation or circumstances. Her selfless acts should be remembered and praised.
I enter into the Congressional Record to illustrate to my colleagues Anne's special qualities the obituary published in the Post on July 3, 2006 which provides an insight into Anne Forrester's humanitarian efforts and accomplishments. She has truly left her mark on our society and she will always be remembered for that. We must keep her memory alive in our hearts and minds so that generations after us will know who she was and what she did. One will not be able to speak about the progress made in the struggle of people of color during the 1960's and 1970's for civil rights and equality of opportunity in the U.S. and for self determination and freedom in Africa and the Caribbean without bringing up her name, for she has without a doubt made great contributions to both areas.
Anne Forrester, Ambassador to Mali
(By Patricia Sullivan)
Anne Forrester, 65, former ambassador to Mali who had an abiding professional interest in Africa and the African diaspora, died of pancreatic cancer June 23 at her home in New York City.
Ms. Forrester was appointed to the ambassadorship in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and was one of the first African American women to hold the post. A scholar and activist in the 1960s, she made the transition into a position of power in government and diplomacy.
``What I represent is the generation that learned traditional values in the 1950s, was cast into turbulent changes in the 1960s, learned a new vocabulary and had to integrate the changes,'' she told The Washington Post in 1979.
Ms. Forrester served as ambassador until 1981, then returned to Washington to work as staff director for the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, where she laid the groundwork for the anti-apartheid bill that passed Congress in 1986.
She helped Randall Robinson as he launched the TransAfrica Forum, which lobbies on African issues. Ms. Forrester joined the United Nations staff in 1985, a decade after working as staff director for Andrew Young at the State Department, when he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
A small, delicate woman who joked about her reputation as a forceful advocate, Ms. Forrester carried memories of segregation and civil rights fights with her into the rulebound world of diplomacy. Born in Philadelphia to a widowed social worker, she attended public schools and remembered sitting in Philadelphia's historic St. Thomas Episcopal Church, listening to the pleas for missionaries in Africa.
``Knowledge of Africa, from a positive and enriching approach, was very evident in our home,'' she said.
She was bright and left home early to attend the majority-white Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. She also graduated from Bennington College in Vermont.
In 1962, she made her first trip to Africa, traveling to Uganda with a summer cultural-exchange program, Operation Crossroads Africa. She taught at her old prep school for a few years, then, seeking an experience in a majority-black environment, moved to Washington to work on a master's degree in African studies at Howard University, which she received in 1968.
She met and married Marvin Holloway, and they became involved in Washington's Drum and Spear Bookstore and Press, a center of black nationalist activism.
During this period, she directed the Black Student Fund; worked part time for Young, then a Democratic member of the House from Georgia; started her doctoral work that culminated in a 1975 degree from Union Institute & University in Cincinnati; was an official observer at a U.N. conference; and traveled abroad a couple of times, all while her twin girls were going through their ``terrible twos.''
She ran Young's State Department office when he was the U.N. ambassador, successfully finding her way through the labyrinths of Foggy Bottom diplomacy. After her ambassadorship and work on Capitol Hill, she became a guest scholar at the Smithsonian Institution's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and an adjunct professor in the African studies department at Georgetown University.
Her work for the U.N. Development Program took her to Lesotho and Ghana and later to Barbados and the eastern Caribbean. She worked in the U.N. regional bureau for Africa under Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, now president of Liberia. Ms. Forrester became a senior adviser to the administrator in charge of launching the U.N. Foundation and in her first year raised $20 million.
Ms. Forrester retired from the United Nations in October 2001 but continued to work as senior policy adviser on Africa, Afghanistan and HIV-AIDS matters for Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Calif.) for a year. She returned to New York and continued to work as an international consultant on African and Caribbean development issues.
Her marriage ended in divorce.
Survivors include two daughters, Camara Holloway of New York and Kandia Holloway of Charlotte, N.C.
