FT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Former Florida Congresswoman Carrie Meek has died at the age of 95. Meek was a Democrat and one of the first Black Floridians elected to Congress since Reconstruction.
She was the grandchild of a slave and a sharecropper’s daughter. In Congress, Meek championed affirmative action, economic opportunities for the poor and efforts to bolster democracy in and ease immigration restrictions on Haiti, the birthplace of many of her constituents.
She retired in 2003 after five terms. Her son, Kendrick Meek, succeeded her and held the seat until 2011.
Family spokesperson Adam Sharon said in a statement that Meek died at her home in Miami on Sunday after a long illness.
Meek was 66 years old when she started her congressional career. It was 1992 when she won the Democratic congressional primary in her Miami-Dade County District, AP reports. She did not have a Republican opponent in the general election.
She was elected to the Florida House in 1978, following in the footsteps of another Black legislator, Gwen Cherry, who died in a tragic car crash. Meek became one of the first African Americans and the first Black woman to serve in the Florida Senate since the 1800s, the AP reports.
Meek graduated from Florida A&M University in 1946 where she was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. A building on campus was named in her honor back in 2007.
Two years later she would graduate from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. During that time, Black people were not allowed to attend graduate school in Florida.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.