Emanuel Cleaver, II
U.S. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, II
Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District
Emanuel Cleaver, II is now serving his tenth term representing Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, the home district of President Harry Truman. He is a member of the House Committee on Financial Services; Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance; member of Subcommittee on Capital Markets; and member of the U.S. Helsinki Commission.
A native of Texas, Congressman Cleaver lived the first seven years of his life with his father, mother, and three sisters in a shack with no electricity or running water in Waxahachie, before moving into public housing in Wichita Falls. Following graduation from Booker T. Washington High School, Cleaver attended Prairie View A&M University outside of Houston, Texas, where he played collegiate football, joined the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, and was involved in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Upon graduation from Prairie View A&M University, Dr. King’s successor, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, asked a young Emanuel Cleaver to “seed” a new chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. The National SCLC Board then elected Cleaver as the Mid-Central Vice Chair of the civil rights organization.
After landing in Kansas City, Congressman Cleaver received his Master of Divinity Degree from the St. Paul School of Theology and served as the pastor of the St. James United Methodist Church for more than four decades. He was later elected as a member of the city council of Kansas City, and in 1991, he was elected as Kansas City’s first Black mayor, serving two terms as the City’s executive.
In 2004, former Mayor Cleaver was elected as the Representative of Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District in the United States Congress, bringing a focus on affordable housing, prioritizing economic development of underserved communities, and stressing the importance of civility in the halls of Congress.
During the 112th Congress, Rep. Cleaver was unanimously elected as the 20th Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
In 2016, as Ranking Member of the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, Cleaver successfully co-authored the largest sweeping reform bill on federal housing programs in 20 years, the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act, a bipartisan comprehensive housing bill that passed into law with a unanimous vote.
In 2018, Congressman Cleaver received the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award Foundation. Past honorees include President Bill Clinton, the late Senator John McCain, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
In 2022, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance, Cleaver helped shepherd the Build Back Better Act through the House of Representatives, which would have been the largest investment in federal housing programs and the construction of affordable housing in American history.