MD-07: Kweisi Mfume (D)
PROFILE
About Mfume:
Rep. Kweisi Mfume was born, raised and educated in the city of Baltimore. He attended Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md., where as an honors student he graduated magna cum laude. He later returned there to join the staff as an adjunct professor teaching courses in Political Science and Communications. He was voted the University’s 2013 Alumnus of the Year.
By the age of 31 he had won his first election to the Baltimore City Council. During his seven years of service in local government, he chaired the City Council’s Committee on Health Policy and led the efforts to diversify city government, improve community safety, enhance business development and divest city funds from the then apartheid government of South Africa.
He enrolled in and graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1984, earning a master’s degree in Liberal Arts with a concentration in International Studies.
At the age of 38, he was elected to the U.S. Congress to represent Maryland’s 7th District, a seat that he would hold for the next decade during the terms of Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton.
As a member of the House of Representatives, Mfume served on several committees and held the ranking seat on the General Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
He also served as a member of the Committee on Education. While in his third term, he was chosen by the speaker of the house to serve on the Ethics Committee and the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate where he was later elected chairman.
Mfume served as both vice-chair and later chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. He was regularly designated to preside as speaker pro tempore of the House. During his fifth term in office, he was appointed by his Caucus as vice-chairman for Communications.
Mfume left his Congressional seat in 1996 to become president and CEO of the NAACP. During his nine years with the organization, he significantly raised the national profile of the NAACP while helping to restore its prominence among the nation’s civil rights organizations. Throughout his tenure he helped establish 75 new college-based NAACP chapters across the nation.
Mfume won a special election to fill the remainder of the term of Rep. Elijah Cummings, the incumbent representative (and his friend of 42 years), who died in office in October 2019. Mfume currently serves on the House Oversight Committee and the Small Business Committee.
