ABOVE: Rep. Jolanda Jones (in gray), Mrs. Alison Leland (in blue), Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and others at the marker unveiling (Photo from Houston Public Media)
On August 18, friends and colleagues gathered at Texas Southern University to honor Mickey Leland. Inside TSU’s Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, those who loved, lived, and worked with the late congressman remembered him as a smart, passionate person who was also a change agent.
George Thomas “Mickey” Leland, III, was born on November 27, 1944, in Lubbock, Texas. He spent part of his childhood with his mother and brother in Houston’s Fifth Ward. Growing up in a mostly Black and Hispanic neighborhood, Leland attended a segregated public school. However, Leland showed early promise as a student. He ranked in the top 10 percent of his class when he graduated in 1964 from Phillis Wheatley High School.
Leland and Barbara Jordan in 1972 (Photo from the book In This Land of Plenty, by Benjamin Talton)
While attending Texas Southern University in the late 1960s, Leland emerged as a vocal leader of the local civil rights movement; he brought national leaders of the movement to Houston. Former Texas State Representative Craig Washington recalled: “I met Mickey Leland on the second floor of Hannah Hall when the law school was in Hannah Hall… Our first meeting was nose to nose, face to face – as opposite as two people could be. Because he was the president of the student body and I was president of the student bar.
He called for a boycott on Wheeler Street because there was no red light; students traversing through the street would get hit by cars. So they had a ‘lay down’ in the middle of the street back during the sit-in demonstrations. And we wouldn’t; I wouldn’t. I persuaded the law students not to join. So he brought a group of his following on the second floor to disrupt the law school classes. I met him in the hallway,” Washington remembered. “He says, ‘Why aren’t you boycotting?’ I said, ‘Because when y’all get put in jail, y’all going to need lawyers.’ We became friends, and the only reason I ran for the Texas Legislature is because Mickey convinced me to run.”
Leland’s own political career started soon after he graduated from Texas Southern University’s School of Pharmacy in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy. He served as an Instructor of Clinical Pharmacy at his alma mater from 1970-71, and set up a “door to door” outreach campaign in low-income neighborhoods to inform people about their medical care options and to perform preliminary screenings. During the same period, he organized and led the Black Citizens Action Teams (“Black Cats”) to protest against police brutality.
Leland’s Political Career
In 1972, Mickey Leland was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from the 88th District of Houston, Texas. He served in the Texas Legislature until 1978.
In Austin, Leland became famous as the champion of health care rights for the poor. According to his bio, Leland was largely responsible for the passage of legislation that provided low-income consumers with access to affordable generic drugs. He also supported the creation of health care access through Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO’s), medical organizations that provide complete health services for a single monthly payment.
In November 1978, Leland won the election to the United States House of Representatives for Houston’s 18th Congressional District. His Congressional district included the neighborhood where he had grown up; he would represent that district for the rest of his life.
During this time, he heard from an old friend. Future Texas House Rep. Harold Dutton had known Leland since childhood; while working at Conoco, he reached out to Leland to get him to vote on a particular bill. To the surprise of some observers, Leland agreed. The oil industry took notice.
“So after the oil industry in Houston decided to focus on Mickey, as a result of what Mickey did, we created the American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE), which became a national organization,” Dutton said. “And also, the oil industry wanted to know what they could do to help Mickey.” So Dutton devised a plan to host a lunch at Houston’s Petroleum Club and turn it into a fundraiser.
“I said, ‘Well, we want money for an internship program,’ because when I walked in Mickey’s office, the first thing I said is: ‘Mickey, where are all the black staffers?’ and he said: ‘I haven’t been able to find any.’ I said, ‘Mickey, you sound like them.’ He said, ‘Well, what are we going to do?’ So we created this internship program,” Dutton recalled. “I wrote the speech for Mickey at the Petroleum Club…We raised over half a million dollars for the program — the program that now Rodney Ellis has, called the Texas legislative internships. That’s where that came from, because Mickey decided to do it.”
Rep. Mickey Leland
The Texas Legislative Internship Program (TLIP) is an internship program sponsored by Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis and administered by the Mickey Leland Center on World Hunger and Peace at Texas Southern University. TLIP allows undergraduate and graduate students attending Texas colleges & universities to be interns in the Texas Legislature. The Mickey Leland Environmental Internship Program (MLIEP) gives students an opportunity to work with Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) or other public entities.
Relief Work & Family
In 1983, Leland married Georgetown University alum Alison Walton. They welcomed a son, Jarrett, in 1986. But as his family grew, so did Leland’s desire to help people. As he visited soup kitchens and makeshift shelters, he became increasingly concerned about the hungry and homeless. Leland co-authored legislation with Rep. Ben Gilman (R-NY) to establish the House Select Committee on Hunger. Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neil named Leland chairman when it was enacted in 1984. The Select Committee’s mandate was “a continuing, comprehensive study and review of the problems of hunger and malnutrition.”
Although it had no legislative jurisdiction, the committee, for the first time, provided a single focus for hunger-related issues. In addition to hunger, Leland’s initiatives would create the National Commission on Infant Mortality, better access to fresh food for at-risk women, children and infants, and the first comprehensive legislation for the homeless. He also worked with the Secretaries of Agriculture and Human Services to develop simple application forms for food stamps and Medicaid.
Leland’s sensitivity to the immediate needs of poor and hungry people would soon make him a spokesman for hungry people on a far broader scale. Reports of acute famine in sub-Saharan Africa prompted Speaker O’Neil to ask Leland to lead a bipartisan Congressional delegation to assess conditions and relief requirements. When Leland returned, he brought together entertainment personalities, religious leaders and private agencies to generate public support for the Africa Famine Relief and Recovery Act of 1985. That legislation provided $800 million in food and humanitarian relief supplies.
Leland became increasingly active on the world stage, working to combat world hunger. He led six relief tours along the Ethiopia-Sudan border. While flying on a mission to a refugee camp in Ethiopia on August 7, 1989, Leland’s plane crashed into a mountainside, killing everyone aboard. Leland left behind his wife Alison, their three-year-old son Jarrett, and twin boys (born posthumously in January 1990).
It was Leland’s widow who delivered some of the day’s most poignant remarks. “For me, Mickey’s always been a beautiful mosaic,” she said. “I was at freshman orientation – I’m a professor in the honors college at U of H — and I was looking at those students – nervous, anxious, not knowing what lies ahead, and I thought about Mickey. I teach a segment on [the] civil rights story of Houston, and he was front and center […] I’m a student of Mickey as much as I was the wife of Mickey, the mother of our now grown-up sons who grew up without their dad, with people and strangers who would say: ‘You had a really great dad. Too bad you didn’t get to know him.’
I also, this summer, spoke to two large groups of Leland interns: 100-plus who were part of the Department of Energy who worked at DOE labs around the country [and] 100-plus students who work through the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality. In both cases, there were key people at the agency – the Secretary of Energy was one — who said, ‘We’re going to name something after him.’ So when I spoke to them this summer, I described Mickey as funny and smart and passionate and late and unorganized, and I did it quite intentionally because I wanted him to be remembered as a real person – not a plaque, not a sign, but a real person who is all those things.”
Mrs. Leland concluded: “It is really important that he is missed and remembered. He really deserves to be.”