Kweisi Mfume
American politician
Kweisi Mfume ( kwy-EE-see uum-FOO-may; born Frizzell Gerard Tate; October 24, 1948) is an American politician who is the U.S. representative for Maryland's 7th congressional district, first serving from 1987 to 1996 and again since 2020. A member of the Democratic Party, Mfume first left his seat to become the president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a position he held from 1996 to 2004. In 2006, he ran for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Paul Sarbanes, losing the Democratic primary to the eventual winner, Ben Cardin. Mfume returned to his former House seat in 2020 after it was left vacant by the death of Elijah Cummings.
Early life and education
Mfume was born as Frizzell Gerard Tate in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 24, 1948, the eldest of four. As a child, his surname was changed to Gray after his stepfather, a truck driver who abandoned his family in Gray's youth. Upon the death of his mother, Gray dropped out of high school at 16 to begin working as many as three jobs at a time to support his three sisters. He also began hanging around on street corners, which included being in the company of gang members.
He changed his name to Kweisi Mfume in the early 1970s.
In his 1996 autobiography, No Free Ride, Mfume wrote that he "was locked up a couple of times on suspicion of theft because [he] happened to be black and happened to be young." Speculation as to the degree of his entanglement with the law has varied, especially as he later came into prominence.
“Kweisi Mfume” enters the record as american politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kweisi, Mfume and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Kweisi Mfume” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Kweisi, Mfume and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q519504. VIAF identifies the subject as 59906971. The Library of Congress control number is n96097176. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1987, 1996 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kweisi Mfume” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.