Barbara Lett-Simmons

Categories

2012 deaths

1927 births

Western Michigan University alumni

20th-century American educators

21st-century American politicians

20th-century American women politicians

21st-century American women politicians

20th-century American women educators

People from Battle Creek, Michigan

Washington, D.C., Democrats

20th-century African-American politicians

20th-century African-American women politicians

2000 United States presidential electors

21st-century African-American politicians

21st-century African-American women politicians

Candidates in the 1984 United States elections

Faithless electors

Candidates in the 1982 United States elections

Schoolteachers from Michigan

African-American people in Washington, D.C., politics

Members of the District of Columbia Board of Education

Women in Washington, D.C., politics

African-American school board members

Barbara Lett-Simmons (née Lett; June 4, 1927 – December 22, 2012) was an American politician and educator in Washington, D.C. A member of the district's Board of Education from 1974 to 1986, she was active in the Democratic Party. In 2000, she served as a presidential elector for Washington, D.C. in that year's presidential election, and notably became a faithless elector when she cast a blank ballot as a protest against the district's lack of voting representation in Congress.

Early life

Barbara Lett was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1927. She was an alumna of Western Michigan University which she graduated from in 1949.

Lett-Simmons's Electoral College abstention, the first since 1864, was intended to protest what Lett-Simmons referred to as the federal district's "colonial status". Her son, David C. Simmons said she had a heart ailment.

References

External links

Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity