Eleanor Holmes Norton has been DC’s congresswomen for 34 years. She was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement and is known for breaking gender barriers throughout her long career; she has long defended the rights of others to equal opportunity.
Norton was born in 1937 and graduated from Dunbar High School in 1955 as a member of their last segregated class. She continued her education at Antioch College, and later graduated from Yale University with a Masters of Arts and Bachelor of Laws.
Norton was an important organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participated in sit-ins in DC, Maryland, and Ohio. She traveled to Mississippi Freedom Summer and contributed to the 1970 anthology “Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from The Women’s Liberation Movement.”
In the early 1970s, Norton signed the Black Woman’s Manifesto, a pamphlet distributed by the Third World Women’s Alliance, focusing on feminism, especially for African American women.
In 1970, Norton represented 60 women who filed a report with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against their employer, Newsweek, claiming they only allowed men to be reporters. The women won, and Newsweek allowed women to become reporters. President Jimmy Carter later appointed Norton as the chair of the EEOC; she became the first female lead of the agency. She later became a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
In 1991, Norton was elected to her first term in Congress representing DC. Though delegates to Congress from DC are entitled to sit in the House of Representatives, vote in committee, and offer amendments, they are not allowed to participate in legislative floor votes.
In 2009, a bill that would grant the District of Columbia a voting representative to the US House of Representatives, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 was presented to Congress. Strongly supported by Norton, the legislation stalled in the House and failed to pass prior to the end of the 111th Congress. In addition, Norton has worked on several important pieces of legislation in her time in office, including the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 which aimed to enhance the ability of Americans to track and understand how the US government is spending their tax dollars.
In 2017, Norton was awarded the Coretta Scott King Legacy Award from the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom, and in 2020 she was given the title of Honoree by the National Women’s History Alliance. This year, Norton will be entering her 34th year in office. She is currently a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.
