IDEALISM AND PRAGMATISM IN NEBRASKA (2024)

Of that, few have doubts. Chambers, the only black in the Legislature of a mostly white state, is in his 24th year of representing some 32,000 citizens of Omaha in Nebraska's 11th Legislative District. It is an impoverished constituency, with a high concentration of blacks and the twin scars of unemployment and blocked opportunity.

I first met Chambers in the late 1960s, when he was working in an Omaha barber shop and wondering whether politics should be his life's work. What he was then he is now: seething, combative and idealistic. He has remained sharp-minded and willing to take on the often thankless work of pragmatic social reform.

Chambers, the son of Mississippi and Louisiana parents, graduated from Omaha's Creighton University in 1959. He relished debating his priest-professors at the Jesuit school on the nuances of theology and philosophy. "I gave them fits," he recalled the other afternoon in his disheveled office on the first floor of the state capitol. "They made us study Thomism. I liked it and I learned it. Some of the priests knew it only by rote. I'd argue with them so much that it reached the point that they wouldn't call on me when I raised my hand. Then I knew I'd won."

It has been that way for the past quarter-century in the Legislature. Chambers has endured enough floor debates, committee wrangling and bill-draftings to know that faithfulness to direction is more at the core of successful politics than the occasional triumph of trouncing an opponent.

It is lamentable that the current definition of a black militant is shaped and tinted by the bigoted ravings of a Louis Farrakhan or Khalid Abdul Muhammad. These fomenters of hate are zero when compared with the steady year-in, year-out militancy of Ernie Chambers. He is respected -- and angrily resented by some -- as a master strategist who knows the rules and their intricacies. It is an intellectual advantage he uses to slow or befog his colleagues on the right.

In the conservative state politics of Nebraska, the best he has been able to do on some bills is merely to ease the assaults on poor people instead of eliminating them. In 1992, Chambers filibustered for eight hours against an amendment to cut welfare payments to pregnant mothers, seen by the majority as an enlightened way to save money. He negotiated a compromise that allowed payments in the final three months of pregnancy.

On the issue of racism, Chambers, who regularly distributes satirical verses to other senators, reports that he observes it daily: "There are people in Nebraska who say, 'I've never seen a black person before so I don't know how to talk to one.' Well, they speak English and I speak English. What do they mean they don't know how to speak to me? They mean they don't know how to deal with a black man who's going to stand up on his own feet and not let anyone walk over him."

Chambers's challenge is the common one that bedevils all outsiders who choose to struggle inside the system: how to be effective while remaining militant. Go too far and you're labeled mad. Don't go far enough and they say you've sold out. Chambers, who is so revered by the voters of his district that he spends no money running for reelection, has been in politics long enough to gauge the boundaries of effectiveness.

Instead of a list of progressive victories -- Nebraska, like many states, is pro-death penalty, pro-NRA -- Chambers's achievement is in his staying power. Just refusing to give up in frustration means to win.

Among his constituents, Chambers's caring about quality schools, job training and helping families secure medical and legal care is not seen as the work of a radical rebel but of an honest, aggressive politician. It is only elsewhere that that is dismissed as effrontery.

In a world of stagnant air, a strong breeze is called a hurricane.