The Fairfax County Human Rights Commission will present its twenty-third annual Human Rights Awards at a banquet on Tuesday, May 2, at 6:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Fair Lakes Hotel, 12777 Fair Lakes Circle in Fairfax. The guest speaker will be John Marshall, Director, United States Marshal's Office, U.S. Department of Justice.
The Human Rights Awards recognize outstanding accomplishments in the area of human rights in Fairfax County. Accomplishments may represent a single significant activity or long-term commitment displayed through various activities. The winners are selected from nominees representing three categories: individual citizens, nonprofit organizations and businesses.
Lloyd M. Burstein has been nominated for the Fairfax County Human Rights Award by Harrell K. Fuller.
Mr. Burstein has delivered 40 years of dedicated service in the pursuit of human rights and has spent a lifetime in the trenches of social justice work.
During the 1950's and 1960's, Mr. Burstein worked to achieve successful integration of local schools when he and his wife, Inge, bought a house next to the black community of Malcom Heights in Vienna. While Virginia was shutting down white schools to avoid integration, Mr. Burstein and others helped to launch a program of study halls in the homes of black children. The study hall program was soon moved into Louise Archer, a black elementary school that had remained open. Some 100 white tutors recruited and sustained by Mr. Burstein were teaching black pupils. The relationships that developed between the white and black parents and children were of great value in smoothing the integration of the schools when the process finally went forward in Virginia.
Mr. Burstein was a member of the Council on Human Relations. Many people recall that during warm weather, he would load up his station wagon with his two sons and a group of black children to drive into D.C. to swim at the Jewish Community Center which welcomed all races. In Virginia, private swim facilities were segregated.
Mr. Burstein was active in founding the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights so that women would be able to make healthy reproductive choices. Mr. Burstein also was an early supporter of Beacon House, a Unitarian-Universalist inner city ministry and learning center for children, developing lines of support between suburban organizations and the inner city center.
For years, Mr. Burstein has been a dedicated fundraiser for local human rights causes, ranging from D.C.'s Center for Creative Nonviolence to the Fairfax County-based program "Our Daily Bread."
For all these reasons and more, Lloyd Burstein is being awarded the 1999 Fairfax County Human Rights Award.