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Politics
Rep. Maxine Waters
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, is certainly not afraid of controversy. Among other things, she has been the leading congressional proponent of the claim that the CIA helped fuel the crack cocaine epidemic. But while she is a controversial figure on the national stage, Waters remains beloved in her Southern California district; in 2000, she won election to a sixth term with 87 percent of the vote.
FULL NAME
Maxine Moore Waters
BORN
August 15, 1938 in St. Louis, Missouri
EDUCATION
B.A., Sociology, California State University, Los Angeles
CAREER
Waters was the fifth of 13 children, which she says contributed to her combative nature. "Just getting heard in a family that size is difficult," she would later tell Ebony. After high school, Waters married Edward Waters and had two children, Edward and Karen. The family moved to the Los Angeles area in 1960, and Waters' first experience in public life was as a Head Start organizer in Watts. That experience convinced her to return to school in the late 1960s.
By the time she graduated, she was divorced, a single mother of two. Her first political experience was as an aide and campaign manager for Los Angeles City Councilman David Cunningham, and she moved on to work for California Sen. Alan Cranston and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. She was elected to the California State Assembly in 1976, where she became an outspoken advocate for women's issues and a founder of the National Political Caucus of Black Women.
Waters was an early supporter of Jesse Jackson's presidential bids in 1984 and 1988. She was elected to Congress in 1990. In the spring of 1992, when her district was at the center of the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict, Waters was one of the first politicians on the scene: She helped deliver relief supplies in Watts and demanded a resumption of electrical and water service to the area. That experience made her a figure on the national stage, where she remains a tenacious and controversial advocate for women, miniorities and inner cities.
AWARDS
First African-American woman on the influential House Rules Committee, first non-lawyer to serve on the House Judiciary Committee.
PERSONAL
The fifth of thirteen children, Waters was raised by a single mother in St. Louis, Missouri. Divorced in 1972, she married Sidney Williams in 1977. She has two children from her first marriage.
WEBSITE
http://www.house.gov/waters/
