Title supplied by cataloger. Rolland Joseph 'Speedy' Curtis was born in Louisiana in 1922. After serving three years in the Marines during World War II, he and his wife, Gloria, relocated from New Orleans to Los Angeles in 1946. Curtis served four years with the Los Angeles Police Department, but resigned from the force in order to pursue both a Bachelor's and Master's degree from USC. He later became involved in city politics, as an associate of Sam Yorty, and later a field deputy to City Council members Billy Mills and Tom Bradley. He was briefly director of the Model Cities program in 1973. Rolland J. Curtis died in his home in 1979, the victim of a homicide. An affordable housing complex on Exposition Blvd. near Vermont Ave. was named in his honor in 1981, along with a nearby street and park.; Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1946, majoring in sociology and minoring in Spanish. She entered the world of politics in 1953 and won the Democratic primary in June 1964. She was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968, sitting in the 175th, 176th and 177th New York State Legislatures. In 1968, Chisholm ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and defeated two other black opponents thereby becoming the first black woman elected to Congress and represented New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. From 1977 to 1981, Chisholm served as Secretary of the Democratic Caucus. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Chisholm announced her retirement in February 1982 and retired from Congress in 1983; she taught at Mount Holyoke College while continuing her political organizing. In 1993 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Chisholm died on January 1, 2005 after suffering from a series of small strokes. In November 2015, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (posthumously awarded) by President Barack Obama.; George Edward Brown (1920-1999) entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1938, but his college education was interrupted by the draft. In 1944, he entered the United States Army serving in World War II and once the war ended he returned to college, finishing his education at UCLA where he graduated with a BS degree in Industrial Physics in 1946. In 1954, Brown was elected as a member of the city council of Monterey Park, and served until 1958. In 1956, Brown became the mayor of Monterey Park, California, an office he held until 1958. He was a member of the California State Assembly from 1959 to 1963. In 1962, Brown won the election and became a member of the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1963 to 1970. A few of Brown's achievements include involvement in the passage of the Civil Rights Act; helped found the University Cooperative Housing Association (UHCA) in 1938; helped organize protests in Los Angeles in 1942 of the Japanese American internment camps; the George Brown Act of 1961 was one of the first comprehensive public employee labor relations laws in the nation; actively supported the farmworker organizing of Cesar Chavez and the mid-1960s grape boycott; served as chairman of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which is now the House Committee on Science; he was known as a champion for science, and was also was a staunch defender of civil liberties and human rights. Other accomplishments during his service on the House Science Committee are as follows: Convened the first congressional hearings on Climate Change; Established the first federal climate change research program in the [National Climate Program Act of 1978; Established the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Established the Environmental Protection Agency; and established the (the now defunct) Office of Technology Assessment. Brown died on July 15, 1999, at the age of 79 while he was serving his 18th term in the House. At the time of his death, He was the oldest serving House member and the longest-serving member of the House or Senate in the history of his home state of California. Pictured (L-R) are a child identified as Tracy Williams, who is being held by Committee Secretary Lucille Deloach, as California Congressman George Brown and New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm look on and smile. They are all at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Jon Williams (not pictured) for an event at the invitation of the Committee of 19 Women for Better Government, which took place on January 1, 1970. See images 00128479 through 00128493; 00134187; 00134188; and 00143491 through 00143493 for additional photos in this series.
Type
image
Format
1 negative : safety ; 10 x 13 cm. Photographic safety negatives
Brown, George Edward,--1920-1999 Chisholm, Shirley,--1924-2005 African American women African American politicians African American girls African American children Women Men Girls Children Politicians Legislators Dwellings Corsages Name tags Smiling Posing Los Angeles (Calif.)
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