Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: Carrie Meek, the granddaughter of a slave and a sharecropper who became one of the first black Floridians elected to Congress since Reconstruction, died on Sunday. She was 95 years old.
Family spokesman Adam Sharon said in a statement that Meek died at his home in Miami after a prolonged illness. The family did not specify the cause of death.
Meek began his congressional career at an age when many people begin retirement. She was 66 when she easily won the 1992 Democratic congressional primary in her Miami-Dade County district. No Republican opposed him in the general election.
Elsie Hastings and Corinne Brown joined Meek in January 1993 as the first Black Floridians to serve in Congress since 1876 as the states’ districts were redrawn by federal courts in accordance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
On her first day in Congress, Meek reflected that her grandmother, a slave on a Georgia farm, would never have dreamed of such a feat, with her parents telling her that anything was possible.
He always said the day would come when we would be recognized for his character, he told The Associated Press in an interview that day.
In Congress, Meek supported affirmative action, economic opportunities for the poor, and efforts to strengthen democracy in Haiti and ease immigration restrictions at the birthplace of many of its constituents.
She was also known for her liberal views, powerful but powerful oratory and colorful Republican bashing.
The last Republican who did something for me was Abraham Lincoln, he told the state delegation at the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Meek joined his son Kendrick, a former state soldier and state senator, in 2000 to protest the end of affirmative action policies in the Jeb Bush office of then-Florida Gov. Since earning his master’s degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1948, he has long argued in favor of such policies. At the time, blacks were not admitted to Florida graduate schools.
Meek decided not to seek a sixth term in 2002. His son Kendrick succeeded in winning his heavily Democratic district, a seat he had held for four terms before an unsuccessful bid for the US Senate in 2010.
After leaving Congress, Carrie Meek returned to Miami and built a foundation to work on issues of education and housing. He was also criticized for some of his business deals.
She lobbied for a biotech park that was planned for Miami’s impoverished Liberty City neighborhood, but it was never completed. County officials eventually launched a criminal investigation, and the park developer was arrested in October 2009 on charges that he stole nearly $1 million from the project.
Congressional records showed that Meek was paid while his son asked for millions of federal dollars for the project. Meek said he was paid as a consultant, and both mother and son denied that their efforts were linked.
Before entering politics, Meek worked as a teacher and administrator at Miami-Dade College.
She was elected to the Florida House in 1978, replacing Gwen Cherry, a leading black legislator who was killed in an auto accident. She became the first African American and the first black woman to serve in the Florida Senate since the 1800s
Carrie Pittman was born on April 29, 1926 in Tallahassee to Willie and Carrie Pittman, and was the youngest of 12 children. Her father worked as a sharecropper in the nearby fields and her mother used to do laundry from white families.
He graduated from Florida A&M University in 1946 with degrees in biology and physical education. The university named its building for the Black History Archives in his honor in 2007. She was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
She accepted a position at Bethune Cookman College as a coach and became the institute’s first female basketball coach. In 1958, she returned to Florida A&M as an instructor in health and physical education. She remained in this position till 1961.
Meek continued his teaching career at Miami Dade Community College as the first black professor, associate dean, and assistant to the vice president from 1961 to 1979.
Then, she began her political career, representing Florida’s 17th Congressional District as the Democratic Florida State House Representative.
In Congress, Meek was a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee and worked to secure $100 million in aid to rebuild Dade County as the area recovered from Hurricane Andrew.
She retired in 2002 and shifted her focus to the Carrie Meek Foundation, which she founded in November 2001, to provide the Miami-Dade community with much needed resources, opportunities and jobs. Meek led the foundation’s daily operations until 2015, when he stepped down due to declining health.
Meek is survived by his children Lucia Davis-Rayford, Sheila Davis Kinui and Kendrick B. Meek, seven grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and several nieces and nephews.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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