Texas Southern University Digital Scholarship @ Southern University Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability Reports Sustainability

7-2013 Congressman Mickey Leland: Mickey Leland in Ethiopa Belinda Otogo Texas Southern University, [email protected]

Jew Don Boney JR Texas Southern University

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/mlcejs_reports Part of the African Studies Commons

Recommended Citation Otogo, Belinda and Boney, Jew Don JR, "Congressman Mickey Leland: Mickey Leland in Ethiopa" (2013). Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability Reports. Paper 4. http://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/mlcejs_reports/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability at Digital Scholarship @ Texas Southern University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mickey Leland Center for Environment Justice and Sustainability Reports by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship @ Texas Southern University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mickey Leland Center for Environment, Justice and Sustainability Undergraduate Summer Research Program 2013 Congressman Mickey Leland Student : Belinda Sinforsa Otogo Meneng - Mentor Jew Don Boney Director, MLCEJS

Mickey Leland: The Political Activist on Hunger and Poverty Belinda Otogo –Candidate B.A Public Affairs Introduction Timelines This project is about the activist, Mickey Leland, and it includes conducting archival 1972 Leland was first elected to the Texas State research, the arrangement, description, House of Representatives preservation and digitization of archival materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and 1974 he also served as a delegate to the Texas multimedia recordings of Leland’s state accomplishments while serving in public office. constitutional convention, where he helped Quotations This effort advances to create a Mickey rewrite Texas’s 97 -year old -Jim Crow –era "If you save one life, you save the whole world." Leland’s digital archive. constitution, focusing on reforming the judicial and executive branches of the state government “I am as much a citizen of the world as I am of my country” 1984, Leland create the House Select Committee “People in positions of power should help that in Methods Used on World Hunger need, regardless of who they are or where they Leland helped drum up $800 million in relief live”. To create this project, speeches, funds, at the height of the African famine newspapers, internet articles, and collection guides of archival materials from 1989, , he took advantage of the the Mickey Leland Papers and Collection congressional summer recess to check on the Conclusions were compiled. There was a thorough progress of refugee camp near the Sudanese- This work has digitized and provided more search of hard copy files as well as the Ethiopian border electronic information on the icon that is Mickey internet to find quotations and timelines on Leland. It has also worked to commence the the subject. This process included 1989 All 15 people aboard were killed, including compilation of the lost inventory of the Mickey researching through 1500 boxes and doing Leland and three congressional aides Leland papers. an inventory of the findings

Study Area and Background Moving forward, the papers, images, chronological milestones of Leland accomplishments will be posted to the “new” George Thomas (Mickey) Leland was born in Lubbock, Texas, on November 27, 1944, to Alice Mickey Leland Center website further developed Rains. It was Leland’s maternal grandfather who nicknamed him “Mickey” for a Leland Exhibit. as new findings are Leland was active in the civil rights movement as a student in the late 1960s, often participating in discovered. The website and Mickey Leland protests and describing himself as "Marxism” and a revolutionary. Archives will be enhanced and expanded through While in the state Legislature, Leland made his first trip to . The young politician developed a the use of Social Media such as Facebook and deep affection for the continent, staying in Tanzania for three months rather than scheduled there Twitter. weeks nobody knew where I was, “Leland recalled, “My mother thought I was dead. But the fact is that I got totally absorbed in Africa. Leland ability to garner support from both the district’s black and Hispanic constituents sealed his victory over Hall, with 57 percent of the vote Leland proved an active advocate for all minorities, focusing particularly on the needs of his black and Hispanic constituents, to best serve the large Mexican- American population in his district, http://www.tsu.edu/academics/colleges__schools Leland learned Spanish. /publicaffairs/mickeyleland.php Leland greatest passion developed from his three-month stay in East Africa http://www.answers.com/topic/mickey-leland When famine struck east Africa in the mid-1980s, Leland was an outspoken advocate for alleviating http://lelandapplication.org/ hunger on the continent http://www.lelandcenter.org/ Leland often involved two images from his frequent trips to Ethiopian refugee camps: a strong of http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/14/obituaries/r starving people rubbing their stomachs and pleading for food and an Ethiopian girl who dies in his epresentative-mickey-leland-44-dies-in- harms as he turned to ask her caretakers about her condition. “Every day I see her face”, Leland said. crash.html