Mickey Leland

George Thomas " Mickey" Leland ( born November 27, 1944 in Lubbock, Texas; † August 7, 1989 at Gambela, Ethiopia ) was an American politician. Between 1979 and 1989 he represented the state of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Life

Mickey Leland attended the public schools in Harris County and thereafter until 1963, the Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston. This is followed by a course of study at the local Texas Southern University joined. In 1977, he was senior vice president of King State Bank. In the same year he was also Director of Development Projects at Hermann Hospital. At the same time he began a political career as a member of the Democratic Party. Between 1972 and 1979 he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives. In July 1972, he attended the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach in part, was nominated for the George McGovern presidential candidate; In 1974, he was then a delegate to a meeting on the revision of the Texas State Constitution. In 1976 he was elected to the Democratic National Committee.

In the congressional elections of 1978 Leland in the 18th electoral district of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC was chosen, where he became the successor of Barbara Jordan on January 3, 1979. After five elections he could remain until his death in Congress. Since 1983 he was chairman of the Special Committee, which dealt with the global hunger problem ( Select Committee on Hunger ). Mickey Leland sat very one for helping the starving people, especially in Africa. He also traveled frequently in these regions. On one of these trips, he was born on 7 August 1989 in a plane crash near Gambela killed.