Democrats\u2019 aging leadership<\/a> targeted by younger generations of the left. But Scott had been dismissive of pressure to retire.<\/p>\n\u201cThank God I\u2019m in good health, moving and doing the people\u2019s work,\u201d the congressman said in 2024. <\/p>\n
His wife and campaign adviser Alfredia Scott was even more direct. \u201cWhen the congressman decides to leave, he won\u2019t be pushed out,\u201d she said at the time. \u201cHe will bow out.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Albert Scott was born in rural Aynor, South Carolina, on June 27, 1945, in the era of Jim Crow segregation. He spent part of his childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, along with stints New York and Florida. Scott graduated from Florida A&M University, one of the nation\u2019s largest historically Black college campuses \u2014 and in office he was an outspoken advocate for federal support of HBCUs. Scott also earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School in 1969. <\/p>\n
He settled in Atlanta after graduate school, opened his own advertising business and got his first start in politics as a staffer on Andrew Young\u2019s 1972 congressional campaign. Young would go on to be Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador under President Jimmy Carter, another Georgian. <\/p>\n
Scott was elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 1983, part of the first generation of Black lawmakers in that body. He spent two decades in the state House and Senate before being elected to Congress in 2002. <\/p>\n
Among his notable achievements on Capitol Hill, Scott secured $80 million for historically Black land-grant schools as part of the 2018 Farm Bill. The money was steered to agriculture-related scholarships at 19 campuses. He helped author various housing and mortgage aid measures, and he pushed for better health care and other benefits for veterans and their families. On foreign policy, Scott was an outspoken advocate for NATO and post-World War II American alliances. <\/p>\n
Scott is survived by Alfreida Scott, who is the sister of baseball Hall of Fame member Henry Aaron, the couple\u2019s adult children and grandchildren. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Brown reported from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 U.S. Rep. David Scott, a Georgia Democrat and the first Black chairman of the House…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":745918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[101628,5356,20148,327,307205,6064,723,4528,10104,57,4353,8123,307206,15118,50,12299,80,32857,3036,89,61,322,67,8128,132,68,93,151597],"class_list":["post-745917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-andrew-young","tag-atlanta","tag-black-experience","tag-congress","tag-david-albert-scott","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-foreign-aid","tag-ga-state-wire","tag-general-news","tag-georgia","tag-hakeem-jeffries","tag-henry-aaron","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-news","tag-notable-deaths","tag-politics","tag-sc-state-wire","tag-south-carolina","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-u-s-republican-party","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-congress","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-news","tag-yvette-clarke"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116449821853493988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}