U.S. Congresswoman Carrie P. Meek (1926-2021) was responsible for introducing Florida’s Fair Housing Act, which outlawed discriminatory housing practices and offered legal remedies to combat it. The law made it illegal to deny housing to any persons because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. She personally wrote and introduced Hospice legislation in Florida as a state representative, which eventually was adopted in other states and became federal law. She sponsored legislation in the state senate which led to thousands of affordable housing units being constructed in Florida. She successfully sued Metropolitan Dade County as a Senator, forcing the county commission there to adopt single member districts.

Chosen by Tallahassee-area Senate President Pat Thomas to be Senate President Pro Tem, she was the first woman and first African-American to hold this post in the Legislature. She sponsored the Performance Bond Exemption amendment, which offered opportunities for small and minority-owned businesses to receive state construction contracts. The Congresswoman also successfully sponsored legislation for the Minority, Women and Small Business Enterprise (MWSBE) to exist in Florida. She sponsored the Community Revitalization Act of 1981, which infused $5,000,000.00 into riot-torn Miami, following the Arthur McDuffie riots. After only three years as a state legislator, she was considered the most powerful Black member of the Legislature. She loomed large over the reapportionment process in the 1982 session facilitating the switch to single-member districts in the House and Senate. She also was responsible for the legislation that created the Florida Commission on the Status of Women.

Congresswoman Meek championed the renovation and expansion of the Samuel H. Coleman Memorial Library at Florida A&M University and secured funding for the construction of a new President’s residence on campus. She introduced a bill to require employers to make Social Security payments for domestic workers and to ease paperwork requirements. The so-called “Nanny” bill was signed into law. She fought to create two new USDA funded programs, which created the Center for Biological Controls and the Center for Water Resources at Florida A&M University, and secured $3.8 million for the renovation and expansion of the Florida A&M University Southeastern Regional Black Archives Research Center and Museum at Carnegie Library. In 2006, the Florida Legislature named the facility the Carrie Meek/James N. Eaton, Sr. Southeastern Regional Black Archives Research Center and Museum. Meek was responsible for hundreds of millions dollars being invested across Florida in several new programs, buildings, initiatives, and most importantly, laws that impacted the lives of those most forgotten by society and left out of the political process.