K. Leroy Irvis, the first African-American speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, a poet, orator, civil rights leader and champion of education, has died. He was 89.
Mr. Irvis spent more than three decades at the pinnacle of politics, in the Hill District, Harrisburg and Pennsylvania. The first black speaker of any state legislature since Reconstruction, he shaped legislation that reformed the state's fiscal system, promoted health care, and expanded access to education.
As a young civil rights leader, he challenged his adopted city's business and political leadership, battling for job opportunities. Though he paid a price for activism in the short term, he would be embraced by the establishment he had confronted, emerging as a towering figure in Pennsylvania politics.
"He was a giant, no doubt," said former Gov. Dick Thornburgh.
"Leroy Irvis was, by any definition, a great man,'' said Gov. Ed Rendell, who ordered state flags to be flown at half-staff. "He was a trailblazer ... he brought grace, dignity and a real sense of purpose to Harrisburg.''
"I think back to so many groups of freshman members who would encounter him for the first time and just be awed by him, he had such a powerful presence," said former state Rep. Ron Cowell.
A New York native, Mr. Irvis was the first black graduate of Albany Teachers College, now the State University of New York at Albany. He graduated summa cum laude and went on to earn a master's degree. In the midst of the Depression, he began his career teaching in the public schools of Baltimore.
From his early years growing up outside Albany, Mr. Irvis had nurtured an interest in aviation, often pedaling out to a small airfield to watch biplanes take off and land. When World War II broke out, he recalled a few years ago, his first impulse was to sign up for the Army Air Corps.
"We're not recruiting any colored boys," an officer told him.
"That angered me more than anything else," he recalled, "That anyone would judge me by the color of my skin. ... my father and mother raised me to judge people based on what they do.''
Instead of flying airplanes, as he'd hoped, the future politician spent the war years as an aircraft assembly instructor in a defense plant.
After V-J Day, Mr. Irvis moved to Pittsburgh to take a job with the Urban League. In that position, he organized demonstrations against the city's department stores, protesting their segregated hiring policies. It was an audacious move on more than one level, as some of the major department store owners were significant contributors to the Urban League.
Laurence Glasco, an assistant professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh who is working on an Irvis biography, noted that the late Mayor David L. Lawrence was among those who tried to dissuade Mr. Irvis from the protests, arguing that they hurt the city's image. Mr. Irvis responded that it was the stores' hiring practices, not the protests, that posed a threat to Pittsburgh's reputation.
After a stormy few years, the Urban League let Mr. Irvis go. For a few years, he moved from job to job, including working for a while in a steel mill. Mr. Irvis eventually entered Pitt Law School, graduating fourth in his class in 1954.
He worked as a law clerk for Judges Anne X. Alpern and Loran L. Lewis and was among the first African-Americans to serve as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County. By 1958, Mr. Lawrence, despite their earlier clash, recognized Mr. Irvis' talent and supported him as a candidate for a state legislative seat representing the Hill District.
The victory and initiation into the profession he was born for was tempered, however, by the death of his first wife, Katherine Jones Irvis.
Mr. Irvis, a Democrat, would be elected to 15 terms, rising quickly through the ranks of the fractious chamber. Within a decade, in one of the litany of firsts that marked his career, he became the state's first black House majority leader. In 1977, after a scandal forced the resignation of Rep. Herbert Fineman, Mr. Irvis was chosen by acclamation to wield the speaker's gavel.
The only previous House speaker to be elected by acclamation was Benjamin Franklin.
Mr. Irvis' stature quickly rose above the criticisms of the controversial chamber he would lead.
A Republican leader, quoted in Paul Beers' history, "Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday," described the new speaker as "absolutely honest, intellectually and morally."
In contrast to his fiercely partisan predecessor, Mr. Irvis prided himself on his ability to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. One of his strongest friendships in Harrisburg was forged with Republican leader Matthew Ryan, who also would serve as speaker.
His leadership of the House was enhanced by a productive partnership with the late Rep. James Manderino, a brilliant legislative strategist who, as majority leader, patrolled the chamber's aisles corralling votes, allowing Mr. Irvis, his deep, sonorous voice echoing from the speaker's rostrum, to strike a more statesmanlike stance.
"There are different models for being a speaker," Mr. Cowell said. "It can be a very partisan position or it can rise above partisan politics, and that's the example he set."
The former teacher was a key architect of landmark education initiatives, including the establishment of the state's community college system, creation of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and the measure that conferred state-related status on the University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University, a shift that addressed chronic financial problems at the three schools.
Mr. Irvis told his biographer, Dr. Glasco, that the piece of legislation of which he was most proud was a measure that mandated PKU tests for newborns in the state, a test now used across the nation that detects an enzyme imbalance that can cause brian damage.
In an often uneasy alliance with then-Gov. Milton Shapp, Mr. Irvis was one of the key architects of the state's income tax, which, while much criticized, helped repair the state's budget after years of chronic shortfalls. He was frustrated, however, in his support of a constitutional change needed to replace the flat tax with a graduated income tax, an approach that he believed would be more progressive.
Mr. Irvis was a champion of the state's Human Relations Commission, fighting to grant it subpoena power against widespread opposition. He opposed the death penalty, and as a delegate to the state's 1968 Constitutional Convention, sponsored, along with Mr. Thornburgh, the mandate for public defender offices across the state.
In 1971, Mr. Beers recounted, when a prison reform bill was in jeopardy, he reminded his colleagues that William Penn had been a prison inmate, saying, with his trademark eloquence, "We have to make up our minds whether we consider the people we put behind bars as animals or human beings. We must not put them behind walls so high that they cannot see daylight and we can't hear their cries.''
In 20th century America, the respect that Mr. Irvis was universally accorded within the Capitol was not guaranteed beyond its walls. After one late-night session of the House in 1969, Mr. Irvis, as a guest of some legislative colleagues, was denied service at a Harrisburg Moose lodge. He challenged the denial in court and won at the trial level.
In a bitter disappointment to Mr. Irvis, however, the U.S. Supreme Court would later uphold the lodge's position that it was entitled, as a private club, to enforce its discriminatory rules.
"The irony was that while he lost the case in court, within a year of the court case, the Moose quietly dropped race from their membership criteria at a national level," Dr. Glasco noted.
Mr. Irvis resisted racial categorization.
"You have not elected a black man to be speaker; but ... you have elected a man who happens to be black," he said on the day he rose to the post.
On another occasion, while emphasizing that his first loyalty was simply as an American, he told The Associated Press, "You have to think of yourself as a black man first and a Democrat second. Any black man that says he doesn't is either a fool or a liar."
Visible from the windows of Mr. Irvis' office suite in the Capitol is the large state office building that would be renamed for him in 2003. Another tangible tribute to his career, the K. Leroy Irvis Reading Room at Pitt's Hillman Library, displays evidence of the varied interests he pursued beyond politics and government. On its walls are several African-styled masks crafted by Mr. Irvis, an accomplished painter and sculptor.
In addition to official documents, the archives include examples of his poetry and many of the journals in which he recorded, in clear, upward-sloping handwriting, observations and notes ranging from literary excerpts to the phrases and inflections of young men he heard hawking the Pittsburgh Courier on Hill District corners.
Mr. Irvis owned an extensive private library of his own.
"He was very scholarly," Dr. Glasco said. "There are thousands of volumes: art history, church history. He was a really devoted reader of Shakespeare -- the histories and the tragedies more than the comedies.''
Mr. Irvis' early fascination with aviation, frustrated by the Army Air Corps recruiter after Pearl Harbor, evolved into a passion for building and flying model airplanes. He spent countless days and weekends flying the model craft and forging friendships with other enthusiasts at the K. Leroy Irvis Airfield, at Hillman State Park in Washington County.
"He loved going out there as often as he could," Dr. Glasco said. "Later in life, he couldn't fly anymore because his eyesight wasn't good enough; he'd crash the planes. But he still loved going out there, kibitzing and talking."
Mr. Irvis is survived by his wife, Cathryn L. Irvis; son Reginald Irvis of Harrisburg; daughter Sherri Irvis-Hill of Philadelphia; and four grandchildren. Funeral arrangements were incomplete last night.
Correction/Clarification: (Published Mar. 18, 2006) Former state House Speaker K. Leroy Irvis attended Albany Teachers College, now the State University of New York at Albany. The school name was incorrect in this story as originally published in Mar. 16, 2006 editions. Also, the story stated incorrectly that Mr. Irvis was the first African-American to serve as an assistant district attorney in Allegheny County. While he was among the first, several other black lawyers served in that office before him.
K. Leroy Irvis: 'You have to think of yourself as a black man first and a Democrat second. Any black man that says he doesn't is either a fool or a liar.'
First Published: March 17, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
