In 1992 Carrie P. Meek won election to the United States
House of Representatives becoming one of the first African-American lawmakers to represent Florida in Congress since
Reconstruction. Focusing on economic development and
immigration issues important to her district, Meek secured
a coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee as
a first-term lawmaker. In the House, Meek worked across
the aisle on health care reform and sharply resisted welfare
reform efforts during the mid-1990s.
Carrie Meek was born Carrie Pittman on April 29, 1926, in Tallahassee, Florida, the daughter of Willie
and Carrie Pittman, and the granddaughter of a woman
who had been born enslaved. Meek’s parents were
sharecroppers; her father later became a caretaker and her
mother a laundress and the owner of a boarding house.
Nicknamed “Tot” by her siblings, Meek was the youngest
of 12 children and lived with her family near the old
Florida capitol in a neighborhood called the “Bottom.” As
a young girl, Meek participated in the Girl Scouts. When
the group went to deliver brownies to the state capitol,
Meek was barred from entering because of her race. She
waited on the sidewalk while her white peers walked in the
front door.1
In college, Meek starred in track and field while
earning a BA in biology and physical education at Florida
A&M University in Tallahassee in 1946. Florida banned
Black students from attending state graduate schools, so
Meek enrolled at the University of Michigan. The state
government would pay her out-of-state tuition “if we agreed
to get out of Dodge,” she later recalled.2 She graduated
in 1948 with a master’s degree in public health and
physical education.
Afterward, Meek worked at Bethune Cookman
University, a historically Black college in Daytona Beach,
where she coached basketball and taught biology and
physical education. She later taught at Florida A&M. In
1961, as a single mother with two young children, Meek
accepted a position at Miami-Dade Community College,
where she spent the next three decades teaching and
working in college administration.
In 1978 she ran for the Florida state house of
representatives and defeated 12 other candidates to win
the seat. Her youngest child, Kendrick, remembers her
creating campaign materials on a tight budget. Graphic
design students from Miami Dade College drew signs
“[with] waterproof markers, [writing] ‘Carrie Meek.’
And then we put a black and white picture [of her] in
the middle of it and put a little cellophane over it. That
was the sign. There was no printing or union printing
or anything like that. Those were the original signs. And
the handout was basically something that was typed with
her picture on it, and we ran photocopies of it.” Meek
served in the state house from 1979 to 1983, chairing the
education appropriations subcommittee. From 1983 to
1993, Meek served in the Florida senate. She was the first
African-American woman elected to the senate and the first
Black legislator to serve there in over a century. A skilled
lawmaker who was once called “the conscience of the
Florida Senate,” Meek passed a minority business enterprise
law and other legislation to promote literacy and help
students stay in school.3
In 1992 Meek declared her candidacy for Congress when
incumbent Representative William Lehman, a 10-term
Democrat, decided to retire. Meek was 66 years old, and
one competitor tried to turn her age into a campaign issue.
But Meek saw it as an advantage. “He should continue
to say that I’m too old,” she said, “because the folks that
are going to get out and vote are going to be my age or
around my age, and they’re told every day they’re too
old. He’s doing nothing but helping us.”4 Meek captured
the Democratic nomination for the newly reapportioned
district, which ran through Miami’s northern suburbs in
Dade County. In the largely Democratic district, she ran
unopposed in the general election. Alongside Corrine
Brown and Alcee Lamar Hastings, who also won election to
the House that November from Florida, Meek became one
of the first three African-American lawmakers to serve in
Congress from Florida since the mid-1870s.
Meek’s soft southern accent and grandmotherly
demeanor often concealed her ambitious and determined
agenda in Congress. In her first term, she lobbied intensively
for a seat on the Appropriations Committee, an assignment
normally unheard of for a new Member. She met with
Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington and said, “I just
want to share with you that I’ve served in the appropriations
committee in the [state] legislature. I would love to carry
out your agenda on Appropriations… . Hurricane Andrew
just hit my district. They really need me to be on this
committee to help rebuild [it]. But I am committed to
the things that … you would like to see happen on the
Appropriations Committee.” When she left the Speaker’s
office, Foley told his aide, “Put her on Appropriations.”5
When Republicans took control of the House in 1994,
Meek was bumped off Appropriations and reassigned
to the Budget Committee and the Government Reform
and Oversight Committee. In 1996 she returned to the
Appropriations Committee and eventually served on two
of its subcommittees: Treasury, Postal Service, and General
Government; and VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies.
Shortly after arriving on Capitol Hill, Meek sought
federal disaster aid for her district which bore the brunt of
Hurricane Andrew in August 1992. On Appropriations,
Meek worked to expand federal programs to create jobs and
provide opportunities for African-American entrepreneurs
to open their own businesses. Meek also authored a measure
to amend Social Security to cover household workers. On
behalf of her district’s Haitian community, Meek sought to
extend U.S. residence for immigrants and refugees.6 And in
1999 alone, from her seat on the Appropriations Committee,
Meek secured tens of millions in tax breaks for developers
working in underserved neighborhoods in her district and
millions of dollars more for public housing programs and
other community services. Moreover, in order to ensure the
2000 Census was accurate, she submitted a measure to allow
welfare recipients in traditionally poor and undercounted
neighborhoods to work temporarily for the U.S. Census
Bureau without losing their benefits. “I knew what it was
like to be treated differently,” she said about growing up in
segregated Florida. “I wanted to see things changed, and
wanted to assist any movement to help with changing it.”7
Meek served in the minority party for all but her first
term in Congress, and on certain national health issues,
she reached across the aisle to shape policy. She worked
with Republicans to change warnings on cigarette labels to
reflect the fact that African Americans suffered from several
smoking-related diseases at higher rates than white smokers.
And she teamed up with Republican Anne Meagher
Northup of Kentucky to increase funding for research on
lupus and to provide federal grants for college students with
learning disabilities.8
On other issues, Meek was not afraid to speak out and
challenge national officials. In early 1995, Meek denounced
Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia on the House Floor
amid the controversy surrounding a $4.5 million advance
he received for a book deal. “If anything, now, how much
the Speaker earns has grown much more dependent upon
how hard his publishing house hawks his book,” Meek
said. “Which leads me to the question of exactly who does this Speaker really work for… . Is it the American people
or his New York publishing house?” Republicans shouted
Meek down and struck her remarks from the Congressional
Record.9 She also argued that Republican attempts to cut
spending and reform the welfare system meant Congress
was trying to balance the budget on the backs of America’s
working poor, elderly, and infirm. “The spending cuts
that the House approved today fall mainly on the weakest
members of our society, on the sick and on the elderly,” she
said in June 1997. “Tomorrow we will be voting on tax cuts
that mainly favor the wealthy… . Today, the House voted to
rob from the poor so that tomorrow the majority can help
the rich.”10
“We see showboats and we see tugboats,” the civil rights
icon Representative John R. Lewis of Georgia said about
the different legislative styles in Congress. “She’s a tugboat,”
Lewis said of Meek in 1999. “I never want to be on the side
of issues against her.”11
Meek easily won all four of her re-elections.12 Her son,
Kendrick, credited her success to her philosophy on
campaigning. “She would always say to me, ‘Kendrick,
you have a choice. You can run for office for three months
and probably get elected, or you can treat every day as
though you’re running for office and always be re-elected,’”
he recalled. “She just worked all the time.”13
In 2002 Meek declined to seek certain re-election to a
sixth term, citing her age. “I wish I could say I was tired of
Congress,” she told the Miami Herald. “I love it still. But at
age 76, understandably, some of my abilities have diminished.
I don’t have the same vigor that I had at age 65. I have the
fire, but I don’t have the physical ability. So it’s time.”14
Kendrick B. Meek, who served in the Florida senate,
announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination
in her district. Throughout his campaign, he followed his
mother’s guidance. “When you’re in this [election] process
it’s hard to trust advice,” he said. “[But] if you can’t trust the
advice of your own mother, something’s wrong.”15 When
he won the November 2002 general election, he became
just the second child to directly succeed his mother in
Congress.16 His election also marked just the fifth time a
Congresswoman’s child was chosen to serve in Congress.
Meek continued to serve as a sounding board for her son
during his House career. She offered advice on legislative
strategy, campaign techniques, and constituent relations.
She also told him stories of her childhood, so he would
better understand the history of the district and the state. Years after she retired from Congress, he recalled, “She
shared those experiences with me to make sure that I was
well-rooted and understood the experience in Florida, which
she, in many ways, was able to use … as a policymaker. I
think that’s what made her so powerful.”17 Carrie Meek died on November 28, 2021, at her home in Miami, Florida.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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