FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Carrie Meek, the grandchild of a slave and a sharecropper’s daughter who grew to become one of many first Black Floridians elected to Congress since Reconstruction, died Sunday. She was 95.
Meek died at her house in Miami after an extended sickness, her household mentioned in an announcement. The household didn’t specify a explanation for loss of life.
Meek began her congressional profession at an age when many individuals start retirement. She was 66 when she simply received the 1992 Democratic congressional main in her Miami-Dade County district. No Republican opposed her within the common election.
Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown joined Meek in January 1993 as the primary Black Floridians to serve in Congress since 1876 because the state’s districts had been redrawn by the federal courts in accordance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In Congress, Meek championed affirmative motion, financial alternatives for the poor and efforts to bolster democracy in and ease immigration restrictions on Haiti, the birthplace of a lot of residents of her district.
Politicians and public figures on Monday recalled Meek’s pioneering profession.
“All through her a long time of public service, she was a champion for alternative and progress, together with following her retirement, as she labored to make sure that each Floridian had a roof over his or her head and entry to a high quality schooling,” Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi mentioned.
After years as a South Florida consultant, Meek determined to not search a sixth time period in 2002. Her son Kendrick succeeded in successful her closely Democratic district, a seat he held for 4 phrases earlier than an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010.
After leaving Congress, Carrie Meek returned to Miami and created a basis to work on schooling and housing points. Earlier than coming into politics, Meek labored as a trainer and administrator at Miami-Dade Faculty.
She was elected to the Florida Home in 1978, succeeding pioneer Black legislator Gwen Cherry, who had been killed in an auto accident. She grew to become one of many first African People and the primary Black girl to serve within the Florida Senate for the reason that 1800s.
She graduated from Florida A&M College in 1946 with a level in biology and bodily schooling. The college named its constructing for Black historical past archives in her honor in 2007.
She accepted a place at Bethune Cookman Faculty as an teacher and have become the establishment’s first feminine basketball coach. In 1958, she returned to Florida A&M as an teacher in well being and bodily schooling. She held that place till 1961.
Meek continued her instructing profession at Miami Dade Group Faculty as the primary Black professor, affiliate dean, and assistant to the Vice President from 1961 to 1979.
Then, she started her trailblazing political profession, representing Florida’s seventeenth Congressional District as a Democratic Florida State Home Consultant.
In Congress, Meek was a member of the highly effective Appropriations Committee and labored to safe $100 million in support to rebuild Dade County as the world recovered from Hurricane Andrew.
She retired in 2002 and shifted her focus to the Carrie Meek Basis, which she based in November 2001, to offer the Miami-Dade neighborhood with much-needed assets, alternatives, and jobs. Meek spearheaded the Basis’s day by day operations till 2015 when she stepped down on account of declining well being.
Meek is survived by her kids Lucia Davis-Raiford, Sheila Davis Kinui and Kendrick B. Meek, seven grandchildren, 5 great-grandchildren and a number of nieces and nephews.
In an announcement, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava referred to as Meek a “true trailblazer.”
“She was by no means afraid to make use of her voice to talk out in opposition to inequality or to battle for the disenfranchised and the weak — and her towering legacy will proceed to form our neighborhood and the nation for generations to return,” Levine Cava mentioned.
Broward County Commissioner Dale Holness additionally paid tribute to Meek, saying “I’ve discovered an amazing quantity about politics and public service from her and loved a few years of attending her congressional classroom held yearly on the Congressional Black Caucus annual occasions… Her legacy will dwell on for a lot of generals to return.”