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Developer's
New Role Lets Him Add To His Work For Equal Rights
By Bob Torbett
Northern Virginia Daily - Friday, January 31, 1992
It might seem odd to some
that a white man who has made his living as a real estate lawyer
and developer was recently appointed by Gov. L. Douglas Wilder
to the Executive Board of the State Council on Human rights. But
a closer look at the life of D. Douglas Adams of Boyce reveals
a person strongly committed to equal rights.
Adams opposed massive resistance to racial integration in the
late 1950s and early 1960s when localities in Virginia chose to
close down their public schools rather than follow the federal
government's orders to end segregation.
"I've always felt very strongly about the constitutional
right to equality," said Adams, who practiced law in Northern
Virginia for 38 years before moving to the Shenandoah Valley four
years ago to head up a development company in the Airport Business
Center in Frederick County.
"I recognized that some people were treated unequally under
the law and socially and culturally. And I just felt from a very
early age that there was a need to treat all people equally,"
he said.
The Council on Human Rights investigates possible violations of
state anti-discrimination laws in cases involving public accommodations
such as educational institutions, real estate transactions and
employment.
Members of the executive board serve in an advisory capacity.
When Adams graduated from the University of Virginia's Law School
in 1949 and moved to Northern Virginia, he found a region that
was still decidedly part of the South in its attitudes toward
race.
Blacks and whites in Northern Virginia during that era went to
separate schools and blacks were forbidden to enter other types
of public facilities used by whites, such as restaurants and bathrooms,
Adams said. "Then it was (described as) 'separate and equal,'
but 'separate and unequal' is what it was," he said.
Things began to change when the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1954, outlawed
segregation in its landmark decision, Brown vs. Topeka, Kan.,
Board of Education, and the federal government began its push
toward integration, Adams said.
He said he joined an organization in Fairfax County, Save Our
Schools (SOS) that lobbied localities in the state to integrate.
In the late 1950s, he said, he helped form the Virginia Council
on Human Relations, in which blacks and whites from across the
state discussed ways to enable the races to get along better.
Adams said he feels the council's work was instrumental in bringing
improved conditions for minorities in the state.
He said he also helped form a group that bought land in Fairfax
County to provide low-income people with affordable housing.
Adams' views on race occasionally put him at odds with his fellow
lawyers. When 25 lawyers in the Fairfax County Bar Association
voted to pass a resolution calling for the impeachment of Earl
Warren, Chief Justice of the United States at the time of the
Brown Decision, Adams said he was one of three attorneys who opposed
the measure.
But, he said, "I always liked working with people so I was
not one who stood out and made enemies over all this. I tried
to do it on a basis that people could appreciate and understand
what I was trying to do. I personally prefer the quiet mediation
approach to the solution rather than the flag-waving, screaming-and-hollering
approach."
Adams also pushed for greater educational opportunity for minorities
during his tenure on the Board of Governors of George Mason University
from 1983 to 1991. He said he promoted increased hiring of minority
faculty at the university and programs to encourage minority enrollment.
Adams also served as Chairman of the Executive Board of George
Mason's Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
He said the institute's work ranges from trying bring peace to
troubled areas of the world, including Northern Ireland, South
Africa and the Middle East, to local concerns such as working
with troubled families in Northern Virginia.
Adams said the mediation skills he picked up working with the
institute should serve him well on the Council on Human Rights.
Adams said he objects to the stereotype some people have of developers
being unconcerned about others.
"You can be a developer and still be sensitive to other people's
needs," he said. "I don't think businessmen and those
who are sensitive to human problems have to be two different people.
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