This concludes CNW’s Black History Month series highlighting African American women and men who made historical past once they served as Cabinet secretaries to respective United States presidents.
Jeh Charles Johnson (born September 11, 1957)
Johnson, an lawyer, was nominated as U.S. secretary of homeland safety by President Barack Obama throughout Obama’s second time period in 2013 and remained within the submit till January 2017.
Prior to serving within the Cabinet, from 2009 to 2012, Johnson was the general counsel of the Department of Defense. Johnson was additionally a federal prosecutor and basic counsel of the Department of the Air Force earlier than serving within the Obama administration.
Johnson was born in New York City, and raised in Wappingers Falls, New York. He’s the grandson of sociologist and Fisk University President Charles S. Johnson. Former Secretary Johnson was named Jeh for a Liberian chief, who was mentioned to have saved his grandfather’s life whereas on a mission to Liberia with the League of Nations in 1930.
With a lower than stellar highschool profession at Roy C. Ketcham High School the place he was incomes C and D grades, Johnson’s imaginative and prescient of turning into at lawyer turned a motivating issue when he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts diploma, and later from Colombia Law School with the Juris Doctor diploma.
Since 2020, Johnson has been a companion on the regulation agency Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and a member of the boards of administrators of Lockheed Martin and U.S. Steel.
Loretta Elizabeth Lynch (born May 21, 1959)
Lynch Lynch, an lawyer, succeeded Eric Holder as U.S. lawyer basic in President Obama’s Cabinet, serving from 2015 to 2017.
Before serving because the 83rd lawyer basic, and first African-American lady U.S. lawyer basic, she served because the U.S. lawyer for the Eastern District of New York underneath Presidents Bill Clinton (1999–2001) and Obama (2010–2015).
Lynch was born in Greensboro, North Carolina and grew up with mother and father who attended Shaw University—an HBCU the place the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was based.
Young Lynch spend hours along with her father watching court docket proceedings within the Durham, North Carolina courthouse. She additionally developed a eager curiosity in aiding folks marginalized by racism on listening to tales about her grandfather, a sharecropper and pastor, who within the Thirties helped folks transfer to the north to flee racial persecution within the then segregated south.
Lynch earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and American literature from Harvard College in 1981 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1984, the place she was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. She additionally was awarded an honorary diploma from Duke University.
Following her commencement from Harvard, she turned a federal prosecutor in New York in 1990, rising to go the Eastern District workplace. From 2003 to 2005, she served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Anthony Renard Foxx (born April 30, 1971)
Foxx, one other of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet appointees, served as U.S. secretary of transportation from 2013 to 2017. Fox, who’s an lawyer, had the excellence of being one of many few cupboard nominees to have acquired unanimous affirmation by the Senate.
His appointment to Obama’s Cabinet adopted his tenure as mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina from 2009 to 2013. When he was elected as Charlotte’s mayor, he created historical past because the youngest mayor of that metropolis.
Foxx was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and as a youth attended and graduated from West Charlotte High School. He would go on to main in historical past at Davidson College, the place he additionally served as the primary African-American scholar physique president. Following his commencement from Davidson College, he went to New York University School of Law, graduating with a Juris Doctor in 1996.
John B. King Jr. ( born January 5, 1975)
King is a Puerto Rican-American educator and lawyer who was appointed by President Barack Obama as U.S. secretary of training in 2016, serving within the place for just one 12 months when Obama’s second time period resulted in 2017.
King was born in Flatlands, Brooklyn, NYC, right into a household steeped in public training. His father, John B. King Sr., was Brooklyn’s first Black principal and later turned New York City’s govt deputy superintendent of faculties. And his mom, a college steering counsellor. Both his mother and father died earlier than King was turned 12 years previous and he was raised he would subsequently be raised by an uncle in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
He attended and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts diploma In authorities from Harvard University, after which he taught social studies and acquired his master’s degree at Teachers College, Columbia University.
King graduated from Columbia, and taught for 3 years together with two at a constitution faculty in Boston. He is credited for being one of many founders of the Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, the place he served as co-director for 5 years and developed its curriculum and guidelines. Under King’s management, Roxbury Prep’s college students attained the very best state examination scores of any city center faculty in Massachusetts, closed the racial achievement hole, and outperformed college students from not solely the Boston district colleges but in addition town’s prosperous suburbs.
King later acquired a Juris Doctor at Yale Law School and a Doctor of Education diploma in academic administrative observe at Columbia.
King later was appointed a managing director for Uncommon Schools, an city, public constitution faculty group that operates a few of the highest-performing city public colleges in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. In 2013 Uncommon Schools received the Broad Prize for high constitution community.
Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. (born September 18, 1951)
Carson a famend African-American neurosurgeon, writer, and politician was the one African American appointed by President Donald Trump to serve in his Cabinet. Carson served because the seventeenth United States secretary of housing and concrete growth from 2017 to 2021. Prior to being nominated by Trump, Carson was one of many many rival candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.
Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan and attended Southwestern High School, the place he developed an affinity for sciences. He later attend Yale University on a scholarship and graduated with a BA in psychology in 1973 and was accepted to the University of Michigan Medical School. After graduating with the MD in 1977 he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, and accepted to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine neurosurgery program, the place he served one 12 months as a surgical intern and 5 years as a neurosurgery resident, finishing the ultimate 12 months as chief resident in 1983.
He turned the youngest director of pediatric neurosurgery on the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, and the youngest within the United States in 1984 at age 33. Following an exceptional profession at John Hopkins the place he achieved outstanding success as a mind surgeon he retired in 2013 as professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics. His achievements embody collaborating within the first reported separation of conjoined twins joined behind the top.
Lloyd James Austin III (born August 8, 1953)
Austin is a retired United States Army four-star general who’s the twenty eighth and present United States secretary of defense since January 22, 2021 in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. He is the primary African American to function U.S. protection secretary. Austin beforehand served because the twelfth commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2013 to 2016.
Austin was the thirty third vice chief of staff of the Army from January 2012 to March 2013, and the final commanding basic of United States Forces—Iraq Operation New Dawn, which resulted in December 2011. In 2013, Austin was appointed as the primary Black commander of CENTCOM by President Barack Obama. He retired from the armed providers in 2016 and joined the boards of Raytheon Technologies, Nucor, and Tenet Healthcare.
Austin was born on August 8, 1953, in Mobile, Alabama and raised in Thomasville, Georgia. He graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) with a Bachelor of Science diploma in 1975. He later earned a Master of Arts diploma in counselor education from Auburn University’s College of Education in 1986, and a Master of Business Administration in business management from Webster University in 1989. He is a graduate of the Infantry Officer Basic and Advanced programs, the Army Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College.
Marcia Louise Fudge (born October 29, 1952)
Fudge, whose affirmation to Joe Biden’s Cabinet as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development continues to be pending, is an lawyer and member of the U.S. Congress from Ohio’s 11th congressional district since 2008. She served as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus within the 113th Congress.
On February 4, 2021, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs superior her nomination by a vote of 17-7.
Fudge was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated in 1971 from Shaker Heights High School; and earned her Bachelor of Science in enterprise from Ohio State University in 1975. Fudge additionally earned her Juris Doctor diploma from Cleveland State University’s Cleveland–Marshall College of Law in 1983.
She was elected Mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio in 2000—a submit she held to November 2008. She has additionally served on the board of trustees for the Cleveland Public Library.
