Walter E. Fauntroy’s leadership in the civil rights movement
paved the way for his two-decade career as the District of
Columbia’s Delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives.
While he worked on many issues during his tenure,
Fauntroy dedicated much of his career to attaining home
rule, the right of the city’s residents to elect a municipal
government, for Washington, DC, and to ending apartheid
in South Africa. During his time in the House, Fauntroy
embraced coalition building to accomplish his legislative
goals, finding strength in numbers. Paraphrasing former
President Theodore Roosevelt, Fauntroy once remarked that
“when you carry a big stick you can walk quietly.”1
Walter Edward Fauntroy was born in Washington, DC,
on February 6, 1933, the fourth of seven children of Ethel, a
part-time seamstress, and William Fauntroy, a clerk with the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Fauntroy graduated from
Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, in 1952 and
earned a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Union University
in Richmond in 1955. On August 3, 1957, Fauntroy married
Dorothy Simms. The couple had a son, Marvin, and later
adopted a baby girl, Melissa Alice. After receiving a bachelor of
divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 1958, Fauntroy
became pastor of Washington’s New Bethel Baptist Church.2
Through his ministry and his devotion to improving
conditions for African Americans, Fauntroy, like many
other Black clerics of the era, became actively involved
in the civil rights movement. Impressed by the DC
minister’s organizational skills and commitment to the
movement, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
appointed Fauntroy director of the Washington bureau of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in
1961. While with the SCLC, Fauntroy helped coordinate
the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on
August 28, 1963. In preparation for the Washington
march, Fauntroy and other leading civil rights activists,
such as future Representative Andrew Young of Georgia,
assisted King with his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
He also urged President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress
to pass civil rights legislation. President Johnson appointed
Fauntroy vice chairman of the 1966 White House
Conference “To Fulfill These Rights,” which focused
on recommendations for improving the lives of African
Americans after the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil
Rights Act. Fauntroy also helped organize the 1965 march
in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery and was national
coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, which sought to draw attention to poverty and force government
action to combat it.3
Fauntroy centered many of his civil rights, antipoverty,
and neighborhood revitalization activities on the nation’s
capital. He was the founder and director of the Shaw Urban
Renewal Project, an economic initiative to restore the
historic African-American neighborhood of Washington,
DC, where Fauntroy grew up. He served as vice chair of
the District of Columbia city council from 1967 until he
resigned in 1969 to spend time with the Model Inner City
Community Organization, a neighborhood planning agency
he founded with other Washington ministers.4
The following year, Fauntroy’s political fortunes
advanced when Congress passed the District of Columbia
Delegate Act. The legislation reinstituted a nonvoting
Delegate to represent the nation’s capital in the U.S. House,
a position last held by Norton Parker Chipman from
1871 to 1875. In the crowded January 1971 Democratic
primary, Fauntroy ran on a platform of instituting home
rule for the District, eliminating job discrimination for
African Americans, and providing federally funded day care.
With the help of campaign appearances by Coretta Scott
King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., and strong
support from local Black churches, Fauntroy orchestrated
a surprising upset over six opponents, garnering 44 percent
of the vote. Overwhelmingly elected in the March 1971
general election with a 59 percent majority, Fauntroy routed
his closest opponent, Republican John Nevius, a White
lawyer with a strong civil rights record, to become the first
African American to represent the District of Columbia
in Congress. “It was an exhilarating experience in learning
the ways of politics, in being Americans for the first time,”
Fauntroy exclaimed after his victory. Fauntroy won by
comfortable margins in his subsequent re-election bids in
the predominantly African-American and Democratic city.5
Fauntroy’s first committee assignment was to the
Committee on the District of Columbia, where he served
for his entire House career and led several subcommittees,
including the Subcommittee on Fiscal Affairs and Health.
He served on the Banking and Currency Committee (later
named the Banking, Currency, and Housing Committee
and subsequently the Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs
Committee) from the 93rd to the 101st Congresses (1973–1991) and chaired three of its subcommittees, including
the influential Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee.
He also served on the Select Committee on Assassinations during the 94th and 95th Congresses (1975–1979),
chairing its Subcommittee on the Assassination of Martin
Luther King Jr. From the 98th to the 101st Congress
(1983–1991), he served on the Select Committee on
Narcotics Abuse and Control.6
Sworn in to the U.S. House on April 19, 1971, Delegate
Fauntroy immediately began work on accomplishing his
major campaign promise: achieving home rule for the
District of Columbia. As a Delegate, Fauntroy was unable to
vote on the House Floor, but he could serve on and vote in
committee and introduce legislation. Fauntroy used his seat
on the District of Columbia Committee to build support
among his colleagues and in the capital for a measure
that would provide self-government for District residents.
Those who lived in the capital city had lacked the ability to
choose their own municipal government since portions of
the District of Columbia Organic Act—a Reconstruction-era
law that consolidated the District of Columbia into
a territorial government—were repealed in 1874. “The
election of a congressman is but the first step toward full
self-government for the District,” Fauntroy commented.
“The immediate next step is that of organizing the people
for political action to make their congressman effective.”
Only a few months after becoming a Delegate, Fauntroy
introduced a home rule bill to expand the independence
of the District by removing some of Congress’s oversight
authority and allowing DC residents to select their own
local officials. He also ran as a “favorite-son” candidate in
the 1972 DC Democratic presidential primary in a symbolic
move to draw attention to home rule and issues affecting
Black Americans. After winning the election, he threw his
support (the 15 votes of the Washington, DC, delegation)
behind the eventual Democratic nominee, George Stanley
McGovern, who endorsed much of Fauntroy’s DC agenda.
“We must learn to use our power and stop relying on simple
benevolence,” Fauntroy declared.7
In 1972, the defeat of District of Columbia Committee
Chairman John Lanneau McMillan of South Carolina,
a longtime opponent of home rule, removed a critical
obstacle from the pursuit of self-government for the nation’s
capital. With McMillian gone, Fauntroy, Charles C. Diggs Jr.
of Michigan, the new chair of the District of Columbia
Committee, and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) helped pass the District of Columbia Self-Government
and Governmental Reorganization Act in December 1973.
When the bill was in committee, Fauntroy pushed for
a provision to give the District financial autonomy, but
the final legislation kept the budget under congressional
control. The bill gave Washington, DC, limited self-rule,
permitting citizens to elect a mayor and a city council.
Although pleased with this progress, Fauntroy continued
his efforts to attain greater independence for the District
from the federal government. In 1978, he helped guide a
proposed constitutional amendment through the House
to give the District of Columbia full representation in
both houses of Congress—one of his most significant
accomplishments. The vote “reaffirmed my great faith in
the American people,” asserted an elated Fauntroy. Despite
his intense lobbying efforts, which included nationwide
speaking tours, the DC Voting Rights Amendment failed to
achieve ratification, with only 16 of the necessary 38 states
approving the measure by 1985. Some critics blamed the
DC Delegate for neglecting to muster enough support for
the amendment and for causing a public backlash against
the legislation after a controversial meeting with Palestine
Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. “The District
is too urban, too liberal, too Democratic and too black,”
Fauntroy remarked bitterly after the defeat of the proposed
amendment. Undaunted by the earlier failure, Fauntroy and
Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts
each introduced legislation in 1987 that would have granted
the District of Columbia statehood and full representation
without amending the Constitution.8
As chair of several subcommittees on the District
of Columbia Committee, Fauntroy vowed to improve
conditions for his many low-income constituents, focusing
on affordable housing and antidrug legislation. He offered
an unsuccessful floor amendment to a 1972 military
construction bill that would have removed authorized
funding for a military construction project on a vacant
portion of the Bolling-Anacostia military complex that he
believed could be used for affordable housing. Fauntroy
criticized urban renewal efforts in the nation’s capital that
adversely affected its many impoverished Black residents.
In 1978, he compiled a housing and community proposal
to address common neighborhood problems such as housing
shortages, abandoned buildings, resident displacement,
and inadequate community services. He also cosponsored
antidrug bills as a member of the House Select Committee on Narcotics and a resolution to create an organization to
battle regional drug trafficking.9
Fauntroy played an active role in the CBC, seeking to
use his position to highlight issues concerning African
Americans, both in the District and nationwide. As chair
of the CBC during the 97th Congress (1981–1983), he
criticized the economic and social policies of President
Ronald Reagan, insisting that they undermined progress
made during the civil rights movement. “We are gravely
concerned about how his policies will affect Black working
people and the million more white Americans who are
unemployed or in danger of losing their jobs,” he stated,
addressing the economic recession of the early 1980s. In
1977, Fauntroy sought to increase the CBC’s effectiveness
by founding the National Black Leadership Roundtable
(NBLR), a group of national organizations encompassing
Black civil rights, business, and labor leaders, to promote
the public policy agenda of the caucus. Under Fauntroy’s
direction, the NBLR successfully promoted the election
of more African Americans to federal office. To build on
the NBLR’s efficacy, Fauntroy helped the CBC initiate
the Action-Alert Communications Network, a grassroots
network of organizations designed to keep Black voters in
at least 100 congressional districts informed on important
issues and to urge them to pressure their Members of
Congress to vote with the CBC.10
Fauntroy’s legislative interests extended beyond
domestic affairs, and he used his position in the House to
bring attention to South Africa’s policy of apartheid. The
DC Delegate made headlines on November 21, 1984,
along with Mary Frances Berry, a member of the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, and Randall Robinson,
director of the foreign policy advocacy organization
TransAfrica. The group was arrested for refusing to vacate
the premises of the South African Embassy in Washington,
DC, while protesting the imprisonment of several South
African labor and civil rights leaders. Their arrest, the first
of many until the passage of comprehensive economic
sanctions by the United States against South Africa in 1986,
sparked a national wave of civil disobedience. “We knew we
had to humble ourselves and go to jail,” explained Fauntroy
after his highly publicized arrest. The three subsequently
launched the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM) to bring
attention to racial inequality in South Africa and to pressure
the Reagan administration into stiffening its foreign
policy toward the apartheid regime. Fauntroy drew upon his experience as a civil rights leader to help orchestrate
a campaign of demonstrations outside the South African
Embassy that included Members of Congress, civil rights
leaders, and celebrities. In January 1986, he joined five
congressional colleagues on a tour of South Africa to assess
the effects of limited economic sanctions imposed by the
United States during the first session of the 99th Congress
(1985–1987). Fauntroy continued his work with the
FSAM and the CBC to pressure Congress to pass stronger
sanctions against South Africa. On October 2, 1986, the
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act became law after the
House and Senate overrode a veto by President Reagan.11
Fauntroy, who believed his responsibility as a Member
of Congress required him to focus on international and
domestic issues, also spent considerable time during
his career highlighting human rights violations in Haiti
and promoting the country’s economic development.
Responding to critics who argued he spent too much time
away from the nation’s capital Fauntroy said, “When I
sought the office of delegate, I ran on the theme that once
elected I would build a network of friends for the District,
and my traveling is for the purpose of strengthening that
network.” In 1979, Fauntroy and Shirley Chisholm of New
York created a CBC task force to bring attention to Haiti’s
high poverty rate and to urge the U.S. government to allow
more Haitian refugees fleeing the rule of President Jean-Claude Duvalier to seek asylum.12
Fauntroy opted to leave his safe congressional seat to
run for mayor of Washington, DC, in 1990. While the
longtime Delegate indicated his decision to run surfaced
from a desire to heal a polarized and beleaguered city,
some speculated he had become frustrated with his limited
authority as a Delegate. Fauntroy joined a crowded field
in the Democratic primary to replace Mayor Marion S.
Barry Jr., who had been arrested and imprisoned, and who
later sought counseling for drug addiction. During the
campaign, Fauntroy had difficulty convincing his political
base that he understood the problems facing the District—a
criticism that stemmed from his global approach to politics
as a Delegate. “The people do not know me,” Fauntroy
admitted. “They don’t know what I do on the Hill.” After
winning less than 10 percent of the vote in the Democratic
primary, Fauntroy noted, “I am disappointed, of course,
that I did not win and that I will not have the opportunity
to personally implement solutions to some of the most
serious problems facing any city in this nation.”13
In 1995, Fauntroy was sentenced to two years of
probation for filing a false financial report in 1988 when
he served in Congress. Fauntroy continued to serve as the
pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington,
DC, and engaged in community service projects until his
retirement in 2009. Fauntroy later experienced a series of
legal setbacks following a charge of check fraud; the issue
was later resolved, and the charges were dropped.14
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