Posted: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:51 PM - 9,717 Readers

By: Editorial Board

Emma Long didn't look for a road to follow. She made her own path one that stretched from post-war Austin to now.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Austin's first female mayor, recalls the night in 1969 when Emma Long was defeated for re-election to the City Council. Long and other council members who had backed a proposed fair housing ordinance the year before met defeat that night. The ordinance would have prohibited racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing in the city. It lost by a solid 3,522 votes.

In her first race for the council in 1948, Long polled 2,169 votes to best a field of three men in a special election. The next year, she garnered more than 6,000 votes to win a full council term and enjoyed wide support in subsequent races.

"She told me then that she had learned to take opponents seriously," Strayhorn said in recalling the night of Long's last hurrah. Long had turned back campaign contributions because she didn't think she had much of a race, Strayhorn said.

Strayhorn is scheduled to be one of those invited to eulogize Long at a public memorial service Friday at Central Christian Church. Long, 98, died Sunday. To most of the people who have arrived since Long graced the council dais, hers is just a name on a park along Lake Austin. Her tenure on the council, however, opened the door to many who later walked through it.

She was the first woman elected to the Austin City Council. It is almost quaint to note that fact in an era when women in elected office and positions of power are no longer a rarity.

But it wasn't that long ago when the very thought of it provoked loud harrumphs. In fact, two of the city's leading businessmen held a press conference when Strayhorn ran for mayor in 1977 to insist that she was running for a man's job. Seriously.

Long preached and practiced inclusion long before it became a buzzword. Austin of the late 1940s and '50s is highly romanticized — so much so that the segregation of the era has been forgotten or is ignored.

Like so many civil rights pioneers of the era, Long entered the fight armed with little more than her principles and good intentions. Still, she waded in.

The people for whom she stood had little money and less power. She was persistent, her son Jeff Long recalled, recounting how his mother would find a way to help.

Former state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos considered her a mentor, as did Strayhorn. Their political views don't mesh easily, but what Strayhorn and Barrientos have in common is that both follow Long's example of helping people navigate government.

In recalling the night of Long's failed re-election bid in 1969, Strayhorn said she is proud that during her tenure as mayor, a fair housing ordinance finally passed. That was in 1982, and despite a spirited campaign opposing the ordinance, it passed by more than 16,000 votes.

Austin is a better place for Emma Long's service to the city. We express our condolences to her family and the people who were touched and continue to be touched by that service. That would be all of us.

*  Story Contributed by: Editorial Board