Carrie P Meek - Infinite Women

Born: 29 April 1926, United States
Died: 28 November 2021
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Carrie Mae Pittman

The following is republished from the U.S. Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

In 1992, Carrie P. Meek won election to the U.S. House of Representatives becoming one of the first African- American lawmakers to represent Florida in Congress since Reconstruction. In her first term, Meek secured a coveted seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee where she helped determine federal spending. Over the course of her 10 years in Congress, Meek focused on economic development and immigration issues important to her district. She also worked across the aisle on health care reform and to protect welfare amid efforts to overhaul federal aid programs during the mid-1990s. “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.”

Carrie Meek was born Carrie Pittman on April 29, 1926, in Tallahassee, Florida, the daughter of Willie and Carrie Pittman. Meek was the granddaughter of a woman who had been born enslaved. Meek’s parents were sharecroppers; her father later became a caretaker, and her mother was a laundry worker and then owned 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. As a young girl, Meek participated in the Girl Scouts. When the group delivered brownies to the state capitol, Meek was barred from entering because she was Black. She waited on the sidewalk while her White peers walked in the front door.

Meek went to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, a historically Black university, and starred in track and field. In 1946, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and physical education. At the time, Florida banned Black students from attending state graduate schools and arranged to pay full tuition if the students went to out-of-state schools. Meek enrolled at the University of Michigan. She graduated in 1948 with a master’s degree in public health and physical education.

Afterward, Meek coached basketball and taught biology and physical education at Bethune Cookman University, a historically Black university in Daytona Beach. 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.

After the death of Gwen Cherry, the first Black woman to serve in the Florida legislature, in 1979, Meek decided to run for the open seat in the state house of representatives. Meek credited her experience on the federal city-planning committee, the Model Cities Program, in the late 1960s and early 1970s for teaching her “how to be competitive, how to make decisions and how to interact with the grassroots people,” and preparing her for elective office. Although she did not receive the support of local Black leaders—who backed another candidate—Meek entered the crowded election and defeated 12 other candidates to win the seat. Her youngest child, Kendrick, recalled 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.”

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 state senate. 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.

In 1992, Meek declared her candidacy for Congress when the incumbent, 10-term Democratic Representative William Lehman, decided to retire. Meek was 66 years old at the time, and one of her competitors turned her age into a campaign issue. But Meek, according to her son, 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.” Meek captured the Democratic nomination for the newly reapportioned district, which ran through Miami’s northern suburbs in Dade County. In the majority- Black and largely Democratic district, she ran unopposed in the general election. Alongside Corrine Brown and Alcee L. Hastings, both of whom 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 1876.

In her first term, Meek lobbied intensively for a seat on the Appropriations Committee, which set federal spending amounts. She met with Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington and, as her son remembers, 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. … 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.” When Republicans took control of the House in 1994, Meek was 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 grant U.S. residency to more immigrants and refugees. 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.

In 1997, Meek sought to restore welfare benefits to disabled legal immigrants after the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act cut off their eligibility to collect Supplemental Security Income (SSI). “The new welfare reform law was supposed to ‘move people from welfare to work,’ but ending life-sustaining payments to legal immigrants who are aged, blind or disabled has nothing to do with that goal,” Meek said. In the Appropriations Committee, she introduced an amendment to continue SSI benefits for two years. A version of the amendment, introduced on the House Floor by Florida Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart and supported by Meek, passed into law in June and successfully extended the benefits. Meek also 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.

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 high rate of African-American deaths caused by smoking. 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.11

Meek was not afraid to speak out against and challenge national officials. On January 18, 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. Republican Robert Smith Walker of Pennsylvania requested Meek’s words be taken down, prompting clerks to write out her words and read them back to the House. Clifford Bundy Stearns of Florida, the presiding officer at the time, ruled what she said out of order, which led to an animated debate on the floor. The Republican majority successfully voted to strike Meek’s words from the Congressional Record, 217 to 176. After the vote, Meek responded on the floor, “I have been elected to this House to speak the truth. There is nothing in the rules that says, ‘Carrie Meek can’t speak the truth,’ and that is what I have done.” Her Democratic colleagues applauded her remarks.12

Meek easily won all four of her re-elections. 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. When he won the November 2002 general election, he became the second child, after James Kee of West Virginia who followed his mother, Maude Elizabeth Kee, in 1965, to directly succeed his mother 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. To help him better understand the history and experiences of African Americans in Florida, she told him stories of the racial discrimination she faced growing up. 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.” Carrie Meek died on November 28, 2021, at her home in Miami, Florida.