Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick obit

Former Detroit U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick dies at 80

 She was not on the list.

Former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, a Detroit Democrat who, over seven terms, rose to become chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and served on the powerful Appropriations Committee, has died, according to people close to the Kilpatrick family. She was 80 years old.

Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, Detroit's new ombudsman, said she learned of the congresswoman's death in a text from Kwame Kilpatrick, her son and Detroit's former mayor.

Gay-Dagnogo, who said she worked on Cheeks Kilpatrick's first campaign for the state House in the 1970s, said: "I will never forget today, the day I took the oath and the day that I lost my mentor."

She called Cheeks Kilpatrick "a Detroit giant" who taught her and other women starting out in politics how to dress, conduct themselves and be leaders.

Cheeks Kilpatrick served 18 years in the state House and 14 in the U.S. House before fallout from Kwame Kilpatrick's arrest on perjury and misconduct in office charges presaged her defeat in 2010 in a Democratic primary to former U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke of Detroit.

She largely remained out of public view after that and for some years had been living outside of Atlanta.

Cheeks Kilpatrick was the second Black woman from Michigan to serve in the U.S. House, having defeated the first, her friend and former U.S. Rep. Barbara-Rose Collins, also of Detroit, at a time when the latter was facing an ethics investigation by House officials and the Justice Department. 

"The people have spoken in the 15th District,” Cheeks Kilpatrick said the night she defeated Collins in 1996, having relied on a political circle that included her son, who succeeded her in the state Legislature, as well as Detroit leaders and pastors. “They want new, effective leadership and I'm here to give it."

With Detroit Mayor Coleman Young as a mentor, she led a political line that included not only Kwame Kilpatrick, but her ex-husband, Bernard, who worked for Wayne County government and as a trusted aide to their son; her sister, former state Rep. Marsha Cheeks, D-Detroit, and at least eight others who held jobs with the city of Detroit or on Cheeks Kilpatrick’s congressional staff.

"They thought this Kilpatrick dynasty would last at least a few generations," Detroit political consultant Eric Foster told the Free Press in 2010. "They had the opportunity to create a burgeoning political machine comparable to the Daley machine in Chicago.”

As a member of Congress in 1997-2011, Cheeks Kilpatrick passed few pieces of legislation into law, but she was able to get President Bill Clinton to sign an executive order forcing federal agencies to give more advertising work to minority-owned businesses. She also got bills passed regulating subprime mortgages and allowing landlords to be fined for knowingly renting homes with lead contamination.

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, she secured earmarks for her Detroit-based district, including $4.7 million for the Karmanos Cancer Institute, $1.5 million for the purchase of alternative-fuel buses and $500,000 for Detroit’s summer youth services program, among others. The late U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, a Bloomfield Township Republican who also served on Appropriations, said in 2010 that Cheeks Kilpatrick was “a player of some significance” among Democrats on the committee.

But she was also once described by the Free Press as having an “imperious” manner that hurt her effectiveness and that she was willing to take even allies to task for what she considered unfair behavior or betrayals. When Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in 2006 urged her caucus to expel U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, who was a member of the Black Caucus, from his committee seat during a bribery probe, Cheeks Kilpatrick said if he were white no such demand would be made. 

There was also wide speculation, as reported at the time by Politico, that Cheeks Kilpatrick voted against the late U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, in his attempt in 2008 to hold onto the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee as payback. Dingell, the longest-serving member of the House in its history, had called on Kwame Kilpatrick to resign the mayorship amid an ongoing corruption scandal involving his attempts to cover up an affair with his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty. Dingell lost the vote and the chairmanship.

Cheeks Kilpatrick will always be remembered for how she defended her son after reports of improper spending began to come out during his first term as mayor.

In 2005, as he ran for reelection to a second term – and was down in the polls – she addressed a crowd, passionately urging them to ignore the reports of misdeeds and support “Y’all’s boy.” They did, but other problems continued to plague Kwame Kilpatrick. Perjury charges landed him in jail for four months and a probation violation led to a longer sentence. Then, corruption charges — for which he would be tried after his mother was already out of Congress — would result in his being sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2013.

 President Donald Trump granted him clemency in 2021, just before leaving office at the end of his first term.

 Kilpatrick began her career with Young’s race, moved to state House

Carolyn Jean Cheeks was born June 25, 1945, in Detroit to Marvell Cheeks Jr., an autoworker and handyman, and Willa Mae Cheeks, a beautician. In 1963, she graduated from the High School of Commerce in the city as president of her class and attended Ferris State University in Big Rapids.

 Ultimately, she earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Western Michigan University in 1972 and a master’s degree in education from the University of Michigan in 1977. Before that, in 1968, she married Bernard Kilpatrick, who would later become a Wayne County commissioner and work for Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara. 

 They had two children — Ayanna and Kwame — before divorcing in 1981. Bernard Kilpatrick would later serve time as part of the public corruption case that sent his son to jail.

But even before she and Bernard Kilpatrick married, Cheeks Kilpatrick had become part of the politically active congregation at the Shrine of the Black Madonna, which helped elect Young as Detroit’s first Black mayor in 1973. She worked as a schoolteacher in Detroit for several years, until friends urged her to run for the state Legislature in 1978. She won and served nine terms, becoming the first Black woman to sit on the state House Appropriations Committee.

 As such, she became a foil arguing for Detroit against budget proposals made by then-Gov. John Engler, a Republican, when he took office in 1991. As a state legislator, she worked to develop River Place off East Jefferson and to block a proposal by Engler to stop funds for local transportation.

 But she lost a bid for Detroit City Council and failed in a bid to win a write-in vote for a state Senate seat.

 Then, with Collins facing trouble with federal investigators and the House Ethics Committee, Cheeks Kilpatrick decided to run against her in 1996, though both were members of the Shrine of the Black Madonna and had been friends and allies of Young’s. At the time, Collins’ brother and campaign manager, Lamar Richardson, said, “Jesus thought Judas was his friend, and that's the way I feel about her."

“The bottom line is she has not represented the district,” Cheeks Kilpatrick was quoted as saying, according to a U.S. House historical website charting her career. She went on to easily defeat Collins in the Democratic primary in the predominantly Democratic district. Political commentator Bill Ballenger commented at the time that “if it hadn’t been that Barbara-Rose Collins basically just self-destructed, Kilpatrick never would have had this chance.” 

Still, she held the seat without serious challenge for the next five elections.

A voice against Iraq War, for overseas relief, civil rights

During her seven terms in Congress, she voiced her opposition to the Iraq War, voting against its authorization in 2002, and fighting to bring AIDS relief and other assistance to sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. She also remained a strong supporter of Detroit’s auto industry, including as efforts got underway in 2008 to rescue General Motors and Chrysler. And she was a proponent of universal government-provided health care.

Unlike some of her colleagues, she never became a fixture on cable or network news channels. She did, however, appear on Comedy Central’s "The Colbert Report" with Stephen Colbert in November 2005, during which the two — as the New York Times later commented — joined “in an off-key duet of ‘Do You Know Where You're Going To?’" the theme from the Motown film “Mahogany.”

She also remained a staunch advocate for civil rights, becoming a force inside the Congressional Black Caucus, and spoke passionately about Rosa Parks, who lived in Detroit until her death in 2005, and Parks’ galvanizing the Civil Rights Movement by her refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Alabama in 1955, for which she was arrested. 

“I remember thinking how dare I not do all I can after seeing this little, strong woman who took a stand to make life better for me, for all of us, how dare any of us to shirk from any injustice,” Cheeks Kilpatrick told the Free Press after Parks’ death.

Kilpatrick’s political career also attracted the attention of the late Manuel (Matty) Moroun, who owned the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. He became one of her biggest campaign supporters — as he battled unsuccessfully to stop Canada from building a competing bridge. 

It wasn’t until her son’s problems began to coalesce in 2008, however, that her political future dimmed. 

That year, despite her incumbency and it being a strong year for Democrats, she barely held on in a three-person Democratic field against Mary Waters and Martha Scott. After that, the writing was on the wall, despite Cheeks Kilpatrick’s best efforts. She brought Pelosi to Grosse Pointe for a fundraiser and upped her level of earmarks headed back to Detroit. She mailed a 14-page brochure to constituents — at taxpayer expense — with pages of testimonials about her efforts in Congress.

It didn’t work. In May 2010, Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to prison for violating his probation and hiding money that was expected to be repaid to the city of Detroit. Then, a month later, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on 19 counts of fraud and tax evasion.

Cheeks Kilpatrick — who had testified twice to the grand jury — called the indictments “devastating,” saying, “As a mother, I hope for the best for my son and will always be there for him.

“Beyond that, I have no further comment."

Less than two months later, she lost to Clarke, then a state senator, 47% to 41%. Speaking to supporters on Election Night, she said, "I will continue to serve and represent, and I wish Mr. Clarke the best.”

And then — as former Free Press reporter Kathleen Gray put it in a story — “she was gone.”

No details were immediately available regarding funeral services.