The powerful Hakeem Jeffries

By Robert Hill
Michigan Chronicle
https://michiganchronicle.com/

He is the most important Black elected public official in Washington, and one of the most important of any race or either gender anywhere in the nation. If the Democrats take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections, he will likely be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives and become second in line for the U.S. presidency. 

For now, Hakeem Jeffries is House minority leader and enjoys unanimous support from the House Democrats, succeeding Nancy Pelosi—who was the first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives—as head House Democrat. He is the first Black person in either the House or the U.S. Senate to lead a political party, and he enjoys Nancy Pelosi’s support.

The Democratic leadership of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate is in the hands of New Yorkers who live in Brooklyn. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer lives in the Park Slope neighborhood, Hakeem Jeffries in Prospect Heights.

No Black man has wielded the power in Congress that Hakeem Jeffries does since the days of Harlemite Adam Clayton Powell, (yet another New Yorker) the chair of the House Education and Labor Committee in the 1960s. That committee oversaw the largest slice of the federal budget and its courageous chair put forth amendments to deny funding to segregationist programs. 

But Adam Clayton Powell and Chuck Schumer came to their Washington eminence at substantially older ages. Adam Clayton Powell started his committee leadership after age 50. Chuck Schumer became Senate majority leader after he was an elderly septuagenarian and before that, Senate Democratic caucus leader as he was  nearing that age group. But, Hakeem  Jeffries came into Congressional leadership as Democratic caucus top dog while still in his 40s.

Hakeem is not the first Jeffries to come to national prominence. Some of us are old enough to remember his brilliant bombastic uncle, Leonard Jeffries Jr., a 1970s through 1990s outspoken political science professor at the City College of the City University of New York, where he was chair of Black Studie also.

An afrocentrist scholar, Leonard Jeffries Jr. is reported to have pronounced Caucasians as the “ice’’ people and Africans/African Americans as the “sun” people. He was removed as chair of Black studies at City College and spent years in litigation against the school.

Born August 4, 1970, Nephew Hakeem has had a less rocky public life and career trajectory. Hakeem Sekou Jeffries was born downtown and raised in the Crown Heights neighborhood of New York’s borough of Brooklyn. 

An honors graduate of Brooklyn’s Midwood High School—a public school—Hakeem Jeffries attended the State University of New York at Binghamton (today Binghamton University) on the state’s southern tier. He graduated with honors in 1992. At Binghamton he became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, one of the “Divine Nine” predominately Black Greek college organizations.

Hakeem Jeffries earned a master’s degree in public policy at Georgetown University. Delivering the student address at the Convocation, he graduated—as a magna cum laude NYU Law Review member—from New York University Law School in 1997. It is there that he earned his juris doctor degree.

After a judicial clerkship and private law practice for a few years, public service became the young professional’s raison d’etre. His five successful years in the New York State Assembly preceded his stupendous rise in service in the U.S. Congress.

There, he has served since 2013 and has sponsored and/ or shepherded notable legislation: criminal reform law that reduced recidivism; laws that ensure that music creators get compensated from digital service providers; inflation reduction legislation; the safer communities act, a bipartisan effort; and the counter-voter suppression John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, among several others. The latter is still to be passed and honors the late civil rights legend.

He has secured millions of dollars in Federal support for housing programs for his Brooklyn constituents. 

But, it is his behind the scenes as well as Democratic floor leadership that earned him his eminence in Democratic Party Congressional wheeling and dealing.  He controls the legislative strategic direction of the House Democrats, often whipping the Democratic votes himself to move bills forward or to prevent opposing Republican-led legislation. 

The Republicans in Congress devote fealty to a lawless administration rather than to the U.S. Constitution. Punishing inflation, Illegal wars in Iran and the Caribbean at the hands of the White House, two government shut-downs, and an unhinged Homeland Security secretary are among the matters that have claimed the attention of leader Jeffries. If he becomes Speaker of the Hose of Representatives in 2027, Hakeem Jeffries will have proven to be up to the job.

For the 118th and 119th Congresses, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries received unanimous symbolic Democratic votes for Speaker. For the 120th Congress in 2027, votes this coming fall for leader Jeffries for Speaker of the House of Representatives just might reflect actuality.

(Robert Hill is a Pittsburgh writer and communications consultant.)