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Barbara-Rose Collins

Representative, 1991–1997, Democrat from Michigan

Barbara-Rose Collins Congressional Pictorial Directory, 102nd Congress

A longtime community activist and single mother, Barbara-Rose Collins was elected to Congress in 1991 on a vow to bring federal dollars and social aid to her economically depressed downtown Detroit neighborhood. In the House, Collins focused on her lifelong interest as an advocate for minority rights and economic aid as well as preserving the family in black communities.

Barbara Rose Richardson was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 13, 1939, the eldest child of Lamar Nathaniel and Lou Versa Jones Richardson. Her father supported the family of four children as an auto manufacturer and later as an independent contractor in home improvements. Barbara Richardson graduated from Cass Technical High School in 1957 and attended Detroit’s Wayne State University majoring in political science and anthropology. Richardson left college to marry her classmate, Virgil Gary Collins, who later worked as a pharmaceutical salesman to support their two children, Cynthia and Christopher.1 In 1960, the Collins’ divorced and, as a single mother, Barbara Collins was forced to work multiple jobs. Collins received public financial assistance until the Wayne State University, physics department hired her as a business manager, a position she held for nine years. Collins subsequently became an assistant in the office of equal opportunity and neighborhood relations at Wayne State. In the late 1960s, Collins heard a speech by black activist Stokeley Carmichael at Detroit’s Shrine of the Black Madonna Church. Inspired by Carmichael’s call to African Americans to improve their own neighborhoods, Collins purchased a house within a block of her childhood home and joined the Shrine Church, which focused on uplifting black neighborhoods via a sociopolitical agenda. In 1971, Collins was elected to Detroit’s region-one school board, earning widespread recognition for her work on school safety and academic achievement. Encouraged by the Shrine Church pastor, Collins campaigned for a seat in the state legislature in 1974. She adopted her hyphenated name (“Barbara-Rose”) to distinguish herself from the other candidates.2 Victorious, she embarked on a six-year career in the state house. Collins chaired the constitutional revision and women’s rights committee, which produced, Women in the Legislative Process, the first published report to document the status of women in the Michigan state legislature.3

Bolstered by her work in Detroit’s most downtrodden neighborhoods, Collins considered running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 against embattled downtown Representative Charles Diggs; however, Collins heeded the advice of her mentor, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, to run a successful bid for Detroit city council instead.4 Eight years later, she challenged incumbent U.S. Representative George W. Crockett, who had succeeded Diggs, in the Democratic primary. In a hard-fought campaign, Collins held the respected but aging Crockett to a narrow victory with less than 49 percent of the vote. Crockett chose not to run for re-election in 1990, leaving the seat wide open for Barbara-Rose Collins. Collins’s 1990 campaign focused on bringing federal money to Detroit, an economically depressed city which was losing its population to the suburbs. Her district’s rapidly rising crime rate (ranked among the top three or four districts in the nation) also hit home for the candidate.5 In 1989, Collins’s teenaged son was convicted of armed robbery, and she concluded that he went astray because he lacked a strong male role model. “I could teach a girl how to be a woman, but I could not teach a boy how to be a man,” she later told the Detroit Free Press.6 Drawing from this experience, Collins aimed at strengthening black families, rallying under the banner “save the black male.” In a crowded field of eight candidates, Collins won her primary with 34 percent of the vote, a victory that amounted to election to Congress in the overwhelmingly Democratic district. Collins sailed through the general election with 80 percent of the vote and was twice re-elected with even greater percentages.7

One of three black women in her freshman class, Collins sought the influence and counsel of longtime Michigan Congressman John Dingell, Jr. Dingell aided Collins in gaining a seat on the Public Works and Transportation Committee (later Transportation and Infrastructure).8 She also received assignments to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. She later traded these two panels for Government Operations (later named Government Reform and Oversight) and the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, where she chaired the Subcommittee on Postal Operations and Services in the 103rd Congress (1993–1995). A member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Women’s Caucus, Representative Collins also was appointed as a Majority Whip-At-Large from 1993 until 1994.

Collins’s career focused on her campaign promises of economic and social aid for the urban black poor. She started in October 1992 by encouraging agricultural growers to donate excess food, which would otherwise go to waste, to urban food banks and shelters.9 Collins generally supported President William J. Clinton’s economic and job stimulus initiatives; however, she vocally opposed adopting the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that opening American borders to cheaper Mexican products would take domestic manufacturing jobs away from urban minority workers. Though she favored the bill’s final version, she voted against the President’s April 1994 omnibus crime bill, objecting to its extension of the death penalty to several more federal crimes and opposing a section that guaranteed life in prison for people convicted of three felonies. Collins argued that these provisions would have the greatest impact on minorities, declaring, “I think justice is dispensed differently for people of color, be they black or Hispanic.”11 Collins’s advocacy of the family unit was apparent when she expressed enthusiastic support for the October 1995 “Million Man March,” a mass rally in Washington D.C., in which marchers expressed their commitment to family. Collins planned to provide water for marchers, exclaiming, “The idea is electrifying…. Black men will be reaffirming their responsibility for black women and for the black family.”12 She also advocated adding housework, childcare, volunteer work, and time put into the family business as a component for calculating the gross national product. “If you raise the status of women,” she declared, “we would be more conscious of the family unit.”13

With her domestic focus, Representative Collins generally opposed greater spending on foreign aid. “Our cities are hurting,” she observed. “We must learn how to take care of America first.”14 In April 1994, however, Collins took an interest in foreign policy when she and five other Democratic House Members were arrested after staging an unlawful sit-in at the White House to protest American policy towards Haiti. In the wake of the island nation’s military coup, the protestors wanted greater acceptance of Haitian refugees, and they demanded that a light embargo of the country be strengthened.15 “What’s being done to Haitians is inhumane and immoral,” Collins said at the time. “The fact of the matter is we welcome Hungarians with open arms, we welcome Vietnamese with open arms, we welcome Cubans with open arms, but when it comes to black Haitians, we tell them, ‘Stand back we don’t want you,’ the result being that hundreds are drowned at sea, children and women eaten by sharks.”16 All six Members were fined and released.

While popular among her constituents, Collins drew negative publicity when the Justice Department and the House Ethics Committee investigated her office in 1996 for alleged misuse of campaign and scholarship funds.17 Though previously unopposed in the 1994 primary, six opponents stepped forward following the public controversy. Challenger Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick defeated the incumbent in the primary by a 21-point margin and went on to win the general election. Barbara-Rose Collins remained active in local politics. In 2002, she won a seat on the Detroit city council for a term ending in 2006.

Further Reading

“Collins, Barbara Rose,” Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, 1774–Present, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=C000633.

Footnotes

  1. The couple had a third child, who died in infancy.
  2. Jessie Carney Smith, ed. Notable Black American Women, Vol. 2 (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1996): 135.
  3. Smith, Notable Black American Women: 135.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Almanac of American Politics, 1996 (Washington, D.C.: National Journal Inc., 1995): 710.
  6. Smith, Notable Black American Women: 135.
  7. “Election Statistics, 1920 to Present,” http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/index.html.
  8. Smith, Notable Black American Women: 136
  9. Congressional Record, House, 102nd Cong., 2nd sess. (5 October 1992): 3074
  10. Congressional Record, House, 103rd Cong., 1st sess. (21 October 1993): 8336; Congressional Record, House, 103rd Cong., 1st sess. (26 October 1993): 8436.
  11. Politics In America, 1996: 685.
  12. Francis X. Clines, “Organizers Defend Role of Farrakhan in March by Blacks,” 13 October 1995, New York Times: A1.
  13. Maria Odum, “If the G.N.P. Counted Housework, Would Women Count for More?” 5 April 1992, New York Times: E5.
  14. Adam Clymer, “House Votes Billions in Aid to Ex-Soviet Republics,” 7 August 1992, New York Times: A1.
  15. Peter H. Spiegel, “Members Arrested in Haiti Protest,” 25 April 1994, Roll Call.
  16. Kenneth R. Bazinet, “Congressmen Arrested Outside White House,” 21 April 1994, United Press International.
  17. In January 1997, the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee found Representative Collins guilty of violating 11 different House rules and federal laws; however, the panel did not recommend disciplinary action against her because she had already left office. The committee provides a historical chart of all formal House ethics actions: http://www.house.gov/ethics/Historical_Chart_ Final_ Version.htm. See also, Robyn Meredith, “Ethical Issues Pose Test to a Detroit Lawmaker,” 2 August 1996, New York Times: A10; Sarah Pekkanen, “Ethics Committee Issues Scathing Report on Collins,” 8 January 1997, The Hill.