Dellums, Ronald (1935–)

Ronald Vernie Dellums was born into a working-class ethnic community in west Oakland, California, and it has been the base from which he has carved out his reputation as an outspoken critic of oppression both at home and abroad through almost 40 years of public life. On leaving high school in 1954, Dellums joined the Marines. Turned down for officer training on account of his race, he left after the 2 years he needed to qualify for college financial assistance through the GI Bill. He took degrees at Oakland City College and [Page 442]San Francisco State University, and a master's degree in social work at UC Berkeley in 1962. While employed as a psychiatric social worker, Dellums got his second education, this time in political activism. He served on Berkeley city council from 1967 to 1970, and in 1971, having run on an anti-Vietnam War platform, Ron Dellums became the representative for California's ninth congressional district.

In early 1971 he called for a full-scale inquiry into U.S. war crimes in Vietnam and, when none was forthcoming, chaired ad-hoc hearings on the issue himself. Dellums also established positions for himself on a range of other important issues throughout his congressional career, from apartheid in South Africa to a national health service, and from support for Israeli-PLO negotiations to the issue of defense spending.

Between 1971 and 1988, Dellums pushed a succession of bills aimed at imposing sanctions on the South African government to end apartheid. While his bills met with conservative opposition in the Senate and the White House, Dellums was at the forefront of positioning the United States within the international sanctions movement. His efforts in support of a national health service met with no such success, as deal-making from the left in pursuit of less radical, seemingly more workable proposals gradually emasculated the legislative efforts of Dellums and like-minded colleagues throughout the 1970s.

In 1973, with the assistance of the Congressional Black Caucus—of which he had been a founding member—Dellums became a member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), providing a voice of considered opposition to large defense spending increases throughout his tenure. He was the first member of Congress to call for the termination of funding for the MX missile in 1977 and the Pershing II in 1979;he also opposed the construction of the B-1 bomber and President Reagan's SDI or Star Wars program. In 1991 Dellums opposed U.S. military action in Iraq, and in 1993, as chairman of HASC, he sought to persuade President Clinton to honor his campaign commitment to lift the ban on gay men and lesbians in the military.

In 1998 Dellums retired from Congress and took on the presidency of Healthcare International Management Company, a for-profit organization that focused on the provision of coordinated health care in southern Africa. He has also acted as a lobbyist for a range of interests on Capitol Hill. While this seemed to mark the end of his political career, it proved to be only a hiatus. By late 2005 his career had come full circle as he returned to Oakland politics with his candidacy for mayor.

...