K. Leroy Irvis

The following article, written by Laurence Glasco, was originally published in Blue Gold and Black, 2010

About six years ago, I visited K. Leroy Irvis (LAW ’54) while he was recuperating from an operation. We had a series of wonderful conversations during which I suggested, and he agreed to, my writing the story of his life. Over the years, as I interviewed him; visited his hometown of Albany, N.Y.; met his sister Marian; read his speeches in the legislature and the newspaper clippings on his career; and spoke with his wife, Cathryn, and his friends and colleagues, my admiration and appreciation for the significance of his life and career expanded and deepened.

By almost any criteria, the life of K. Leroy Irvis was remarkable, filled with triumphs and recognition. Elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as a Democrat from the Hill District in 1958, his maiden speech drew immediate praise from the speaker of the house, an extremely rare tribute for a neophyte. He rose steadily through the ranks of party leadership, being elected caucus chair in 1963, party whip in 1967, and party leader in 1969.

Irvis’ legislative career peaked in 1977, when he was elected—unanimously and by acclamation—speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, a position he held until his retirement in 1988. He was the first African American to hold such a position in any state since Reconstruction. A towering figure in Pennsylvania politics, Irvis’ bipartisan popularity and respect were evident when, in 2003, the South Office Building of the state Capitol complex in Harrisburg was renamed in his honor.

During a 30-year career, Irvis sponsored or cosponsored more than 1,600 pieces of legislation, a number of which dealt with such civil rights issues as fair housing and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Irvis was active in the creation and/or support of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus; Pennsylvania Black Conference on Higher Education; Conference on Black Basic Education; Pennsylvania Minority Business Development Authority; and Sickle Cell Society, Inc. He played a major role in the survival and subsequent success of Bidwell Training Center, a degree-granting adult education facility based on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

One particular case that drew national attention was Irvis’ suit against the Harrisburg, Pa., Moose Lodge for refusing to serve him. The case would eventually be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court (Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis). In 1972, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Moose Lodge, as a private club, to discriminate, but within a year, Moose International Inc. quietly dropped racial qualifications from its membership criteria.

Irvis’ legislative achievements crossed all kinds of borders and benefited all kinds of Pennsylvanians—White as well as Black, rural as well as urban, Republican as well as Democrat. His civil rights legislation outlawed discrimination against all minorities—Catholics and Jews as well as Blacks. Most of his legislation was race neutral, insisting simply that all commonwealth residents have equal access to the state’s benefits. These benefits included consumer rights, reforms to the prison and mental health systems, support for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and administrative reforms to make the legislature’s operations more transparent and accountable. The bill that retained the greatest affection personally for Irvis was one that required doctors to perform a simple test on infants to detect phenylketonuria, saving potentially hundreds from intellectual disabilities.

Irvis’ deepest passion was for making educational opportunities available to all of the state’s citizens. Perhaps his most significant single creation was Act 101, a scholarship program that has benefited thousands of college students, White as well as Black. Irvis also was involved in the passage of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Act, the creation of the commonwealth’s system of community colleges, and increased state funding for higher education.

Irvis’ legislative success stemmed largely from his personal qualities. His unquestioned honesty and integrity helped in his being chosen speaker. His eloquent speeches made him one of the few men who could get legislators to switch their positions simply through persuasion. His conciliatory manner and willingness to treat all colleagues with respect earned him the affection even of rural Democrats and suburban Republicans, a remarkable achievement in a legislature sharply divided along party lines, region, and residence. His erudition earned him the nickname “Teach,” and his self-deprecating humor enabled him to lecture his colleagues without generating resentment.

These personal qualities stemmed from Irvis’ life experiences. Born in 1916, not 1920 as is commonly believed, in Saugerties, N.Y., Irvis benefited from a caring family that instilled in him valuable precepts. His father, Frank, was biracial and bristled at Blacks as well as Whites who spoke disparagingly of the other race.

Irvis took to heart his father’s insistence that people be judged by their character and not by their color. Frank, who worked as a chauffeur and handyman, inspired Irvis with a love of books and learning. Irvis’ mother, Harriet, was a jovial woman who urged her son to care for the less fortunate and to develop his interests in sketching, poetry, and model airplanes. Although born in Saugerties, Irvis grew up in the 1920s in nearby Albany, N.Y., living in a predominantly White neighborhood, excelling in school, and being well accepted by neighbors and classmates. Neither he nor his sister, Marian, recalled suffering one instance of racial discrimination.

After earning a master’s degree at what is now the University at Albany, State University of New York, Irvis taught school in Baltimore, Md., where, unlike in Albany, he encountered blatant racism and racial inequities. Irvis benefited greatly from his stay in Baltimore, for there he lived, at least for a while, in the home of Thurgood Marshall, who later argued the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case before the U.S. Supreme Court and became a Supreme Court justice.

In addition to the influence of his family and hometown, Irvis benefited from the women in his life. In 1941, while teaching school in Baltimore, he met and married Rosetta Ward, also a schoolteacher. The marriage produced a daughter, Jean Frances. Named for Irvis’ father, “Baby Jean” inspired such poems as:

“Jean Frances”
The wine of life runs
Wildly through my baby daughter
It glints in every
Sparkle of her eyes
Her mouth, quick-lipped
for laughter
Merriment sings through her.
She—a winsome
willful sprite
Plucked pizzicato on the E string
Has this soon learned
That no worms eat the
Heart of him
Who looks at life and
Laughs and
Laughs again

The marriage lasted four years, and in 1945, Irvis was remarried, this time to Katharyne Ann Jones of Springfield, Mass. The couple moved to Pittsburgh, where Irvis took a position with the Urban League. In 1947, he helped to organize mass picketing of downtown department stores over their refusal to hire Black clerks. The campaign succeeded, but Irvis soon was fired by the Urban League, which was afraid of alienating key financial backers. Unable to find other employment, Irvis worked in Pittsburgh’s steel mills, where he almost died in an accident.

He wisely left the mills and enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, graduating fourth in his class in 1954. Unable to secure a promised position with a prominent downtown law firm, Irvis briefly worked for The Pittsburgh Courier, as a law clerk to Judges Anne Alpern and Loran Lewis, and as an assistant in the district attorney’s office. In 1958, he ran for a seat in the Pennsylvania state legislature in a spirited campaign that broke the back of the White-controlled Hill District political machine. It was little more than a year later that Irvis’ wife, Katharyne Ann, died. In his grief, Irvis threw himself into his work.

In 1962, another woman entered his life. Cathryn Edwards was herself recently widowed and working in Harrisburg, Pa., when they met. After a long courtship, the two married in 1974. Irvis had been attracted by Edwards’ independent spirit and political activism. He was charmed by her two young children, Reginald and Sherri, who he formally adopted. Together, they brought a much-sought sense of family back into his life. In Cathy, Irvis acquired an important political partner. Founder of the Black Women’s Political Crusade, she served on the board of a number of civic organizations and provided crucial supervision of Irvis’ Pittsburgh office as its voluntary executive director. She helped to solidify local support for a man so busy in Harrisburg that he risked losing touch with his local constituents. In that respect, she was an important reason for his continued landslide reelections.

Irvis showed his touch with the common man. Until he was forced out by the riots of 1968, Irvis resided near the intersection of Centre Avenue and Kirkpatrick Street, a location in the heart of the Hill District that kept him in touch with the “man on the street.” During the riots, Irvis was one of the few local leaders with the credibility and courage to be out on the streets. Identifiable by his orange sweater, he helped to save lives by urging residents to disperse and the police to act with restraint. His efforts were a major reason that the Hill District suffered no fatalities during those fateful days.

Irvis had a long association with the University of Pittsburgh. In 1961, he blocked an effort by the state legislature to investigate Robert Colodny, a Pitt history professor who had served during the Spanish Civil War in the Communist Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In 1966, he sponsored legislation making the University “state related” and eligible for state subsidies, thereby averting a financial meltdown by the institution. He coupled that legislation with demands that Pitt keep its tuition low enough that economically disadvantaged students could attend.

Irvis served on the University’s Board of Trustees and in 1986 battled for divestment of its holdings in firms that did business with South Africa. He remained an emeritus member of the board, and in 2001, the University dedicated the K. Leroy Irvis Reading Room in Hillman Library to house his papers and archives.

Pitt established numerous honors in Irvis’ name. Among them were his being named a member of the University’s inaugural class of preeminent alumni, the Legacy Laureates; the creation of the K. Leroy Irvis Fellowship Program; the production of a 2004 documentary on his life and work, K. Leroy Irvis: The Lion of Pennsylvania, narrated by Julian Bond, which was issued on DVD and broadcast both locally on WQED and statewide on public television; and the naming of Pitt’s annual program of Black History Month observances as the University of Pittsburgh K. Leroy Irvis Black History Month Program.

Irvis was a man of multiple talents. As a young college student, his work won praise from Carl Sandburg, and his book of poetry, This Land of Fire (Temple University Press, 1988), was met with much acclaim. Irvis was a painter, working primarily in oils, with an abstract expressionist theme. He was especially fond of whittling. He was a sculptor with a focus on African masks and completed a mask of Hannibal only a few months before his death. His first and most beloved hobby was building and flying model airplanes, a pursuit he began in Albany and continued until just a few years before his death. He was a dedicated member of the Greater Pittsburgh Aero Radio Control Society, which named a flying field for him in Hillman State Park in Washington County, Pa. In his later years, his favorite pastimes included visiting the airfields during the week and then on weekends going out to lunch with his flying buddies.

Irvis did not receive the level of national or even state recognition that he deserved. He felt that to some extent this was on account of race, that in the early 1980s, when he was interested in running for statewide posts, Pennsylvania was not ready for an African American governor or lieutenant governor. Other factors also operated. Because he came from a “safe” district and faced little opposition, Irvis had little experience with, or taste for, the rough-and-tumble of a major campaign. His honesty and high ethical standards helped to advance his career in the legislature but also meant that there were no well-heeled interests to sponsor an expensive run for higher office. At the national level, in 1976, he was a member of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Democratic National Convention; in 1980, he was vice chair of the state’s delegation; and in 1988, at the end of his political career, he was chair of the credentials committee at the convention in Atlanta, Ga.

Irvis left multiple legacies. He proved that race need not be an insurmountable barrier to achievement and recognition. His support and admiration by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and his long-running position as speaker of the house transcended region, race, and party. The secret to his effectiveness and success was his ability to heed his parents’ advice to judge each person as an individual and to care for the downtrodden. In one particularly contentious debate, an opponent called him a “do-gooder,” to which he replied:

If I am a do-gooder, so be it. This is what my mother tried to teach me to be. I assume that is what each one of your mothers tried to teach you. I do not assume that your mothers sent you out in the morning and said, “Do as much bad as you can.”

He then explained that everyone wants to do good, but people have different ideas of how to do it. When he explained why he thought his way was correct, opponents were charmed and disarmed.

Irvis showed that politics does not have to be a zero- sum game. His legislation was especially designed to help his constituents in Pittsburgh’s Hill District but was framed in such a way as to benefit all the citizens of the commonwealth. These are lessons of great value to citizens and politicians today, locally, in the commonwealth, and nationally.

With his death in 2006, a mighty tree has fallen. Let us hope new sprouts emerge from its roots.

Irvis is survived by his wife, Cathryn; his three children, Jean Frances, Reginald, and Sherri; and his many friends and admirers.