historical leaders
Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-1901)
Harold Ford, Jr. (May 11, 1970)
Mayor Cory A. Booker (Newark, NJ)
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (Washington, D.C.)
Hiram Rhodes Revels (1827-1901)
He was a Senator from Mississippi; born in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, N.C., on September 27, 1827; attended Beech Grove Quaker Seminary in Liberty, Ind., Darke County Seminary in Ohio, and Knox College, Galesburg, Ill.; barber; ordained a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church at Baltimore, Md., in 1845; carried on religious work in Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri; accepted a pastorate in Baltimore, Md., in 1860; at the outbreak of the Civil War assisted in recruiting two regiments of African American troops in Maryland; served in Vicksburg, Miss., as chaplain of a Negro regiment, and organized African American churches in that State; established a school for freedmen in St. Louis, Mo., in 1863; after the war, served in churches in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana before settling in Natchez, Miss., in 1866; elected alderman in 1868; member, Mississippi State senate 1870; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate; presented his credentials upon the readmission of Mississippi to representation on February 23, 1870; took the oath of office on February 25, 1870, after the Senate resolved a challenge to his credentials, and served from February 23, 1870 until March 3, 1871; first African American Senator; secretary of State ad interim of Mississippi in 1873; president of Alcorn University (formerly Oakland College), Rodney, Miss., 1876-1874, 1876-1882; moved to Holly Springs, Marshall County, Miss., and continued his religious work; editor, Southwestern Christian Advocate, official newspaper of A.M.E. Church 1876-1882; in retirement after 1882, taught theology at Shaw University, Holly Springs, Miss.; died from a paralytic stroke in Aberdeen, Miss., January 16, 1901; interment in Hill Crest Cemetery, Holly Springs, Miss.
Harold Eugene Ford, Sr.
(Father of Harold Ford, Jr.), a Representative from Tennessee; born in Memphis, Shelby County, Tenn., May 20, 1945; graduated from Geeter High School, Memphis, Tenn. 1963; B.S., Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tenn., 1967; graduate work, Tennessee State University, 1968; A.A., mortuary science, John Gupton College, 1969; M.B.A., Howard University, Washington, D.C., 1982; worked as a mortician; member of the Tennessee state house of representatives, 1971-1974; delegate to Tennessee State Democratic convention, 1972; delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996; elected as a Democrat to the Ninety-fourth and to the ten succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1975-January 3, 1997); was not a candidate to the One Hundred Fifth Congress in 1996; chairman, Select Committee on Aging (One Hundred Second and One Hundred Third Congresses).
Harold Ford, Jr. (May 11, 1970)
(son of Harold Eugene Ford), a Representative from Tennessee; born in Memphis, Shelby County, Tenn., May 11, 1970; graduated from St. Albans School for Boys, Washington, D.C.; B.A., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., 1992; J.D., University of Michigan Law School, 1996; staff aide, United States Senate Committee on the Budget, 1992; special assistant, United States Department of Commerce, 1993; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Fifth and to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1997-January 3, 2007); not a candidate for reelection, but was an unsuccessful candidate to the United States Senate in 2006. He is the current chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and is a former member of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee. Ford represented the state's 9th congressional district, centered in Memphis, from 1997 to 2007. Ford did not seek reelection to his House seat in 2006 when he unsuccessfully sought the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Bill Frist. He is a member of the Democratic Party and was part of the Blue Dog Coalition.
Governor Deval Patrick
Governor Deval Patrick was elected in November of 2006. He brings to the Governor’s office a broad range of leadership experience at the top levels of business, government, and non-profits. From an early age, he has built his life on hope, and traced a trajectory from the South Side of Chicago to the U.S. Justice Department, Fortune 500 boardrooms, and now the Massachusetts Statehouse.
Patrick came to the Commonwealth at the age of 14. An excellent student despite the difficult circumstances of under-funded and often violent Chicago schools, he was awarded a scholarship to Milton Academy through A Better Chance, a Boston-based organization.
After graduating from Milton, Patrick went on to Harvard, the first in his family to attend college. He received his degree, with honors, in 1978 and spent a post-graduate year working on a United Nations youth training project in the Darfur region of Sudan. He returned to Cambridge to attend Harvard Law School in the fall of 1979.
Following law school, Patrick served as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge before joining the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 1986, he joined the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow and was named partner in 1990, at the age of 34.
In 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the nation's top civil rights post. At the Justice Department, Patrick worked on a wide range of issues, including prosecution of hate crimes and abortion clinic violence, employment discrimination, and enforcement of fair lending laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
During his tenure, Patrick led the largest criminal investigation prior to September 11th, coordinating state, local and federal agencies to investigate church burnings throughout the South in the mid-1990s.
Patrick returned to private practice in 1997 with the Boston firm of Day, Berry & Howard. That same year, he was appointed by a federal district court to serve as the first chairperson of Texaco's Equality and Fairness Task Force. Working with employees at all levels, Patrick and his Task Force examined and reformed Texaco’s complex corporate employment culture, and created a model for fostering an equitable workplace. Patrick was hired by Texaco in 1999 to serve as Vice President and General Counsel leading the company’s global legal affairs.
In 2001, Patrick joined The Coca-Cola Company as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. He was elected to the additional role of Corporate Secretary in 2002, and served as part of the company’s senior leadership team as a member of the Executive Committee.
Governor Patrick has served on numerous charitable and corporate boards, as well as the Federal Election Reform Commission under Presidents Carter and Ford, and as Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Judicial Nominating Council by appointment of Governor Weld.
The Commonwealth’s first African-American Governor, Deval Patrick came into office with a grassroots message of hope, community and hard work. By focusing on transparency and inclusion, he hopes to increase accessibility to government and encourage the civic engagement so crucial to shared progress in education, health care, economic development and other issues.
Diane and Deval Patrick have been married for over two decades and have two college-age daughters, Sarah and Katherine. The Patrick family has lived in Milton, in a house on Deval’s high school paper route, for the last 17 years.
Mayor Cory A. Booker (Newark, NJ)
The Honorable Cory A. Booker, 38 is the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He took the oath of office as Mayor of New Jersey's largest city on July 1, 2006 following a sweeping electoral victory. He is just the third person to govern the city since 1970.
Elected with a clear mandate for change, Mayor Booker has begun work on realizing his vision for the city. He has embarked upon a bold and ambitious agenda for change that is mission-driven and results-oriented. His vision: for Newark to be America's leading city in safety, prosperity and the nurturing of family life. His mission: for Newark is to set a national standard for urban transformation by marshaling its resources to achieve security, economic abundance and an environment that is nurturing and empowering for individuals and families.
In his first week in office, he introduced a 100-Day Plan to implement unprecedented reform in Newark. The major components of the plan are public safety, economic empowerment, nurturing families and children and government reform. Among the areas of emphasis are adding police officers; other changes include modifying the background check process for many city jobs, an effort to help former offenders find employment in the city; refurbishing police stations; improving the delivery of the city's core services; and expanding summer and year round youth programs and services. Now after less than a year in office, changes in many of these areas are already taking hold.
Mayor Booker's political career began in 1998, after serving as Staff Attorney for the Urban Justice Center and as a Program Coordinator of the Newark Youth Project. He rose to prominence by upsetting a four-term incumbent to become Newark's Central Ward Councilman. During his four years of service, Cory earned a reputation as a leader with innovative ideas and bold actions, from increasing security in public housing to building new playgrounds. For this work, he has been recognized in numerous publications, including, among others, Time magazine, Esquire Magazine (naming him one of the country's 40 Best and Brightest in December 2002), New Jersey Monthly (naming him as one of New Jersey's top 40 under 40) and Black Enterprise in December 2005 (naming him to the Hot List, America's Most Powerful Players under
40).
In addition to being the Founder of Newark Now, Cory is a member of several boards including Integrity Inc's Board of Trustees, the Executive Committee of Yale Law School, Columbia University Teachers' College Board of Trustees, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, North Star Academy, and the International Longevity Center. This shining star reformer took his B. A. and M. A. from Stanford University, a B. A. in Modern History at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and completed his law degree at Yale University.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (Washington, D.C.)
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty was elected mayor of the District of Columbia in November 2006, carrying every precinct in the city in both the primary and the general elections. He assumed office on January 2, 2007, with a resounding mandate, having won the general election with 89 percent of the electorate.
In his first year in office, Fenty reformed the governance structure of the District of Columbia Public Schools by placing them under the authority of the Mayor. His Administration added police officers and expanded community policing initiatives, expanded health care coverage for the uninsured, and constructed thousands of units of affordable housing while revamping delivery of services to the homeless.
Also in 2007, the Fenty Administration reorganized the Department of Health and created a Department of Disability Services as a cabinet-level agency. It opened a new one-stop permitting center and launched a CapStat accountability program to examine the performance of each District Government agency using objective, numerical standards. The Administration consolidated the National Capital Revitalization Corporation and Anacostia Waterfront Corporation under the authority of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development to coordinate key projects across the District.
Before his election, Fenty served as Councilmember from Ward 4 for six years. He also worked on the staff of the Committee on Education for the DC Council and served as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.
A DC native, Fenty grew up in the city’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and holds a Juris Doctorate from Howard University School of Law. He lives with his wife Michelle, a corporate attorney, and their twin sons, Matthew and Andrew, in the Crestwood neighborhood of Northwest Washington.
Chaka Fattah
Born November 21, 1956 in Philadelphia, Fattah attended Overbrook High School and received an A.A. from Philadelphia Community College in 1976 and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1986. He was a Representative in the Pennsylvania General Assembly from 1983-1988 and a State Senator from 1983-1994.
Representative from Pennsylvania; born in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pa., November 21, 1956; Community College of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa.; University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Philadelphia, Pa.; M.A., University of Pennsylvania’s Fels School of State and Local Government, Philadelphia, Pa., 1986; Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Mass., 1984; special assistant to director of housing and community development, Philadelphia, Pa., 1980; special assistant to managing director of housing and community development, Philadelphia, Pa., 1981; policy assistant, Greater Philadelphia Partnership; member of the Pennsylvania state house of representatives, 1982-1988; member of the Pennsylvania state senate, 1988-1994; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Fourth and to the six succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1995-present). Fattah is married to Renee Chenault-Fattah, a local Philadelphia television news broadcaster on WCAU-TV (NBC 10).
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
He was a Civil rights activist, Baptist minister, and presidential candidate. Born in Greenville, South Carolina, USA, son of an Alabama sharecropper (he adopted his stepfather's last name), he was a good enough athlete in high school to be offered a contract by the Chicago White Sox, but he turned it down because a white player was given so much more money. He also turned down an athletic scholarship at the University of Illinois when he was told that as a black he could not expect to play quarterback. Instead he attended the mostly black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in Greensboro, and in addition to being an outstanding athlete, student, and campus leader, he took a lead in protests that forced Greensboro, NC, to integrate its restaurants and theatres.
He trained for the ministry at Chicago Theological Seminary and, having joined the protest movement led by Martin Luther King Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he was named head of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket (1965), becoming its national head in 1967. Operation Breadbasket was the SCLC's programme to persuade American businesses to hire blacks and to get companies to sell products made by blacks, and Jackson proved highly successful in this for several years. He also helped create the Chicago Freedom Movement (1966) to press for integrated schools and open housing. He was beside King when he was assassinated (1968) and although Jackson was viewed by some as the potential successor to King as the leader in the struggle for rights, he never quite gained the full support of all elements of the black community. Ordained a Baptist minister in 1968, he concentrated his fight for rights in Chicago, and after a falling-out with the SCLC removed him from Operation Breadbasket (1971), he founded his own organization, PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), which would continue to work for improving African-Americans' lives in a variety of fronts.
Increasingly more active on the political scene, in 1972 he led a group that successfully challenged Mayor Richard J Daley's slate of delegates at the Democratic national convention. Backed by yet another of his organizations, the Rainbow Coalition, he ran twice in the Democratic presidential primaries (1984, 1988), gaining enough votes to make him a presence at the convention. And although his occasionally extreme rhetoric and sometimes angry demeanor seemed to frighten off the broadbased support he sought, he constantly won favour with surprising constituencies as he inserted himself into a variety of events, including rushing off to Syria to gain the freedom of an American pilot, and joining picket lines at all kinds of labour actions.
In January 2001, Jackson decided to withdraw temporarily from public life following revelations of an extra-marital affair with a staffer that resulted in the birth of a daughter. He reemerged on the political scene in 2004 following the voting debacle that plagued the presidential election. He called for a congressional debate on the matter, asking for a fair count and national voting standards. His son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., has also emerged as a political figure, becoming a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois.
As controversial as he was charismatic, Jackson continued to be named whenever there was talk of the need for a new African-American leader (whether a mayor of Chicago or the first senator of Washington, DC, if it became a state), and if this very omnipresence also suggested he might be diluting his energies and abilities, he undoubtedly remained one of the more striking figures in American public life in the late 20th century.
Rev. Al Sharpton
Social and political activist, religious leader. Born Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr., on October 3, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. Outspoken and sometimes controversial, Sharpton has become a leading figure in the fight against racial prejudice and injustice. He developed his commanding speaking style as a child. A frequent churchgoer, Sharpton became an ordained minister in the Pentecostal church at the age of ten. He often traveled to deliver sermons and once toured with Mahalia Jackson, a famous gospel singer.
In the late 1960s, Sharpton became active in the civil rights movement, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). SCLC had a program called Operation Breadbasket, which sought to encourage diversity in the workplace by applying social and economic pressure on businesses. In 1969, Sharpton became the youth director for the program and participated in protests against the A&P supermarket chain in the early 1970s. He went on to establish his own organization, the National Youth Movement (NYM).
Sharpton has pursued other interests while continuing to preach: in his teens, he established a close bond with James Brown and developed a father-son relationship, eventually recording the record God Smiled on Me with him. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he worked as a youth organizer with boxing promoter Don King while learning more about African American politics and entertainment.
However, Sharpton never strayed far from activism. He formed the National Action Network in 1991 to fight for progressive, popular-based social policies by providing extensive voter education and registration campaigns, economic support for small community businesses, and by confronting corporate racism. That same year, Sharpton was stabbed in a Bensonhurst schoolyard. This represented a turning point for him. Eventually, he met and reconciled with his attacker.
Sharpton has never hesitated to act in support of African Americans, from candidates for public office to Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant brutalized by Brooklyn police in 1997. Now he is also seeking to build a national multicultural, multiracial movement addressing a range of issues. To that end, in 1999 Sharpton, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree formed Second Chance, a program to serve nonviolent felony offenders after their release from prison. Sharpton also orchestrated a massive protest when police shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 41 times in 1999. In 2001, Sharpton protested the U.S. Navy's bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Attempting to fight injustice wherever he finds it, Sharpton is following in the footsteps of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Frederick Douglass is 1st African-American nominated for president (June 23, 1888)
Frederick Douglass stood at the podium, trembling with nervousness. Before him sat abolitionists who had traveled to the Massachusetts island of Nantucket. Only 23 years old at the time, Douglass overcame his nervousness and gave a stirring, eloquent speech about his life as a slave. Douglass would continue to give speeches for the rest of his life and would become a leading spokesperson for the abolition of slavery and for racial equality.
The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey" was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven. (All Douglass knew of his father was that he was white.) During this time he was exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings and spending much time cold and hungry. When he was eight he was sent to Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter named Hugh Auld. There he learned to read and first heard the words abolition and abolitionists. "Going to live at Baltimore," Douglass would later say, "laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity."
Douglass spent seven relatively comfortable years in Baltimore before being sent back to the country, where he was hired out to a farm run by a notoriously brutal "slavebreaker" named Edward Covey. And the treatment he received was indeed brutal. Whipped daily and barely fed, Douglass was "broken in body, soul, and spirit."
On January 1, 1836, Douglass made a resolution that he would be free by the end of the year. He planned an escape. But early in April he was jailed after his plan was discovered. Two years later, while living in Baltimore and working at a shipyard, Douglass would finally realize his dream: he fled the city on September 3, 1838. Traveling by train, then steamboat, then train, he arrived in New York City the following day. Several weeks later he had settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, living with his newlywed bride (whom he met in Baltimore and married in New York) under his new name, Frederick Douglass.
Always striving to educate himself, Douglass continued his reading. He joined various organizations in New Bedford, including a black church. He attended Abolitionists' meetings. He subscribed to William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal, the Liberator. In 1841, he saw Garrison speak at the Bristol Anti-Slavery Society's annual meeting. Douglass was inspired by the speaker, later stating, "no face and form ever impressed me with such sentiments [the hatred of slavery] as did those of William Lloyd Garrison." Garrison, too, was impressed with Douglass, mentioning him in the Liberator. Several days later Douglass gave his speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society's annual convention in Nantucket-- the speech described at the top of this page. Of the speech, one correspondent reported, "Flinty hearts were pierced, and cold ones melted by his eloquence." Before leaving the island, Douglass was asked to become a lecturer for the Society for three years. It was the launch of a career that would continue throughout Douglass' long life.
Despite apprehensions that the information might endanger his freedom, Douglass published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Written By Himself. The year was 1845. Three years later, after a speaking tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland, Douglass published the first issue of the North Star, a four-page weekly, out of Rochester, New York.
Ever since he first met Garrison in 1841, the white abolitionist leader had been Douglass' mentor. But the views of Garrison and Douglass ultimately diverged. Garrison represented the radical end of the abolitionist spectrum. He denounced churches, political parties, even voting. He believed in the dissolution (break up) of the Union. He also believed that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document. After his tour of Europe and the establishment of his paper, Douglass' views began to change; he was becoming more of an independent thinker, more pragmatic. In 1851 Douglass announced at a meeting in Syracuse, New York, that he did not assume the Constitution was a pro-slavery document, and that it could even "be wielded in behalf of emancipation," especially where the federal government had exclusive jurisdiction. Douglass also did not advocate the dissolution of the Union, since it would isolate slaves in the South. This led to a bitter dispute between Garrison and Douglass that, despite the efforts of others such as Harriet Beecher Stowe to reconcile the two, would last into the Civil War.
Frederick Douglass would continue his active involvement to better the lives of African Americans. He conferred with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and recruited northern blacks for the Union Army. After the War he fought for the rights of women and African Americans alike.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908-1972)
Powell was born in New Haven, Connecticut; November 29, 1908. His father, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. was a Baptist minister and headed the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York. His paternal grandfather was white, as were several of his mother's ancestors. He was educated at public schools, the City College of New York and Colgate University. He received an MA degree in religious education from Columbia University in 1931.
During the Depression years, Powell, a handsome and charismatic figure, became a prominent civil rights leader in the Harlem area of Manhattan and developed a formidable public following in Harlem community through his crusades for jobs and housing. As chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Employment, he organized mass meetings, rent strikes and public campaigns, forcing companies and utilities, and the Harlem hospital to hire black workers. Powell organized a picket line and the 1939 New York World's Fair at the Fair's executive offices in the Empire State Building; as a result, the number of black employees was increased from about 200 to 732 [1]. A bus boycott in 1940 led to the hiring of 200 black workers by the transit authority. When Negro pharmacists were failing to get hired, Powell led a fight in 1941 to have drugstores in Harlem hire them all. [2]
In 1944 Powell was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives, representing the 22nd congressional district, which included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman from New York, and the first from any Northern state other than Illinois.
He attended the public schools of New York City; graduated from Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y., 1930; graduated from Columbia University, New York, N.Y., 1932; graduated from Shaw University, Raleigh, N.C., 1934; ordained minister; member of the New York, N.Y., city council, 1941; newspaper publisher and editor; journalist; instructor, Columbia University Extension School, 1932-1940; cofounder of the National Negro Congress; member of the New York state, Consumer Division, Office of Price Administration, 1942-1944; member of the Manhattan Civilian Defense 1942-1945; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth and to the eleven succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1945-February 28, 1967); excluded from membership in the Ninetieth Congress pursuant to H.Res. 278, on February 28, 1967; chairman, Committee on Education and Labor (Eighty-seventh through Eighty-ninth Congresses); elected as a Democrat to the Ninetieth Congress, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by his exclusion but did not appear to be sworn in; reelected to the succeeding Congress (April 11, 1967-January 3, 1971); unsuccessful candidate for renomination to the Ninety-second Congress in 1970; died on April 4, 1972, in Miami, Fla.; cremated and ashes scattered over South Bimini in the Bahamas.