| Kweisi Mfume (pronounced Kwah-EE-see Oom-FOO-may), was born, raised and educated in the city of Baltimore and it was there that he followed his dreams to impact society and to help shape public policy.
He attended Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland 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.
As Mfume's community involvement grew, so did his experience as an activist, radio commentator, administrator, and TV personality. By the age of thirty-one 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 later enrolled in and graduated from the Johns Hopkins University, earning a master's degree in Liberal Arts with a concentration in International Studies. He is a lifetime member of the Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University alumni associations.
At the age of thirty-eight, he was decisively elected to the United States Congress, a seat he firmly held for the next decade during the terms of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
Kweisi Mfume left his Congressional seat to become President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP in February of 1996 after being unanimously elected to the post and served there for nine years. During that time, he significantly raised the national profile of the NAACP while helping to restore its prominence among the nation's oldest civil rights organizations.
His efforts to increase the organization's relevance included pursuing enhanced civil rights enforcement measures within government and in the private sector, economic empowerment for all people, educational excellence and access to affordable healthcare in the most overlooked communities, and establishing 75 new college-based NAACP chapters across the nation. He developed the first ever grading process for economic scorecards of the nation's industries, corporations, banks, airlines and commercial retail chains to bring about greater employment opportunities or face economic boycotts.
In 2010, he completed 12 years of service as a member of the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees and has been previously named "Marylander of the Year" by both the Baltimore Sun newspaper and Maryland Magazine. In that same year he was hired as Executive Director of the National Medical Association (NMA), which was founded in 1895 as the nation's oldest African American Medical Association promoting the collective interests of physicians and patients throughout the U.S. Later in 2011 he was appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services as a member on the National Advisory Council of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) at the National Institutes of Health. He concluded his four-year term of federal service to the NIH in 2014.
Mfume was sworn in as a member of the 116th Congress on May 5, 2020, after winning a special election to fill the remainder of the term vacated by the death of his friend of 42 years (and successor in Congress) Congressman Elijah Cummings. Mfume subsequently won election to a full term in the 117th Congress. So far, his congressional successes include passing legislation to address the longstanding need for diversity in clinical cancer trials by pharmaceutical companies using federal dollars (the "Henrietta Lacks Enhancing Cancer Research Act"), codified and tripled the budget of the only federal agency tasked with promoting the growth and competitiveness of minority-owned businesses (the Minority Business Development Agency), brought back billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief money to his Maryland District, and helped countless constituents with his constituent services efforts.
He serves as a Subcommittee Ranking Member on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the House Committee on Small Business. In 2023, the Democratic House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appointed Mfume to serve on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. He is also a member of various caucuses, most notably the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Caucus, and the Congressional Labor Caucus.
Mfume currently sits as Chairman of the Morgan State University Board of Regents. He recently concluded his gubernatorial appointment to the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, the Gamma Boule Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, and a 33- Prince Hall Mason.
He has been featured on 60 Minutes and has made guest appearances on the ABC This Week Program, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Face the Nation, Inside Politics, Meet the Press, The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, Nightline and countless other news and public affairs programs. He remains a constant advocate for bipartisan political cooperation on social, economic, educational and healthcare issues. Mfume is the recipient of honorary doctoral degrees conferred by Brandeis University, the University of Maryland, Loyola University Maryland, The University of the Virgin Islands, Meharry Medical College, Morgan State University, Morehouse College, Maryland Institute and College of Art, Sojourner Douglass College, Washington College and Howard University. |