11 Facts About Pete Rawlings

Howard Peters "Pete" Rawlings was an American politician and the first African American to become chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee in the Maryland House of Delegates.

Delegate Rawlings was born in Baltimore on March 17,1937 to Howard Toussaint Rawlings and Beatrice Rawlings.

Pete Rawlings's father worked as a custodian in a department store and then for US Postal Service.

Pete Rawlings graduated from Douglass High School in 1954, one of the three schools African Americans were allowed to attend prior to the Supreme Court Decision in Brown v Board of Education.

Delegate Pete Rawlings was a member of Maryland's House of Delegates from January 10,1979 until his death on November 14,2003.

Pete Rawlings was appointed chairman of the Appropriations Committee in 1992.

Pete Rawlings was in the forefront of reforming inner-city public schools, including requiring accountability from Baltimore school officials for lack of educational progress, waste of state funds, and allegations of fraud in spending those funds.

Pete Rawlings co-sponsored legislation that banned racial profiling in Maryland and fought against Maryland Lottery drawings expanding to Sundays.

In 1999, after Kurt Schmoke, Baltimore's three-term mayor, decided not to seek re-election, Pete Rawlings started a search for Baltimore's next mayor.

Less than a month before his death, Pete Rawlings was named the national education Policy Leader of the Year by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

Pete Rawlings has been in the national forefront of insisting upon greater accountability from our education system, both of teacher performance and student achievement, as well as focusing on closing the achievement gap among minority students.