Politics
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick
1945–2025 · teacher, politician
Detroit schoolteacher who served 18 years in the Michigan House and 14 in Congress (1997–2011), chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and was the mother of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Fayetteville, Georgia
aged 80- Birth name
- Carolyn Jean Cheeks
- Detroit years
- 1945–2010s
- Field
- Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Carolyn Cheeks was born in Detroit in 1945 and graduated from the Detroit High School of Commerce. She studied at Ferris State and Western Michigan University, earned a master's at the University of Michigan and taught high school business education in Detroit. In 1978 she won a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives, where she served from 1979 to 1996 and became the first African American woman on its Appropriations Committee. In 1996 she beat incumbent Barbara-Rose Collins in a Detroit congressional primary by a wide margin and went on to represent the city in the U.S. House from 1997 to 2011, sitting on the Appropriations Committee and chairing the Congressional Black Caucus in 2007–2009. Her son Kwame Kilpatrick's mayoral scandals shadowed her last campaigns, and in 2010 she lost the primary to Hansen Clarke. She spent her later years near Atlanta and died in 2025.
Highlights
- U.S. representative from Detroit, 1997–2011
- Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, 2007–2009
- Michigan state representative, 1979–1996
- First African American woman on the Michigan House Appropriations Committee