Former U.S. Rep. Carrie Pittman Davis Meek, the first Black person to represent Florida in Congress since the post-Civil War Reconstruction and a fierce advocate for FAMU, and Florida’s Black communities, Haitian immigrants and the working poor, died Sunday at her home in Miami after a long illness. She was 95. Carrie Meek greets members of the FAMU women's
basketball team in her office in the US Capitol.
The granddaughter of slaves, Meek, a Tallahassee native, and graduate of both FAMU High and FAMU, served as a Florida state representative, state senator and later became a congresswoman in 1992 at the age of 66. She won the nomination for the Democratic Party and ran unopposed in the general election, and was sworn in early.
Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown joined Meek in January 1993 as the first Black Floridians to serve in Congress since 1876 as the state’s districts had been redrawn by the federal courts in accordance with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
While a state Senator Meek, championed the renovation and expansion of the Coleman Library at FAMU, and the construction of a new President’s residence on campus.
In Congress, she fought to create two new USDA funded programs creating the Center for Biological Controls and the Center for Water Resources. In addition, she secured funding for the renovation and expansion of the Carnegie Library which because the Meek-Eaton Black Archives Research Center and Museum.
Meek was a standout student athlete at FAMU lettering in track and field women’s basketball. After graduating from FAMU in 1946, Meek was not allowed to pursue a graduate degree in the state of Florida, and the state paid her tuition to attend the University of Michigan where she earned a Masters in Health and Physical Education in 1948.
