Earl Hilliard (1942- )

December 09, 2009 
/ Contributed By: Michelle Granshaw

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Earl Hilliard

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Earl Hilliard, lawyer, politician, and United States Representative from Alabama’s Seventh Congressional District (1993-2003), was born in Birmingham, Alabama to parents Iola Frazier and William Hilliard in 1942.  Growing up in a segregated neighborhood Hilliard graduated from Western-Olin High School in 1960 and then attended Morehouse College in Atlanta.  At Morehouse, he met Martin Luther King Jr., who inspired him to fight for black rights.

Hilliard received a BA in 1964, a law degree from Howard University Law School in 1967, and MBA from Atlanta University in 1970.  In 1967, he wed Mary Franklin with whom he has two children, Alesia and Earl, Jr.  While working toward his degrees he worked at Miles College in Birmingham and Alabama State University in Montgomery.   He also began a law firm in Birmingham called Hilliard, Jackson, Little & Stansel

In 1975 Hilliard began his political career when he won a seat in the Alabama state legislature representing a Birmingham district.  Elected to the state senate in 1980, Hilliard fought for legislation that would benefit the urban poor. During his time in the state senate, he became chairman of the Judiciary and Commerce, Transportation, and Utility Committees. He also joined the boards of trustees at Miles College and the Tuskegee Institute.

After Alabama redrew congressional district borders in 1992, Hilliard decided to run for a seat in the House of Representatives in a new district with a black majority.  Hilliard’s victory made him the first black congressman from Alabama since Reconstruction.  He was re-elected to his Seventh District Congressional seat four more times.  He served on the Agriculture, Small Business, and International Relations committees and as the vice chairman (1997-1999) of the Congressional Black Caucus. Hilliard was also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

Throughout his ten years in Congress, Hilliard focused on economic issues, such as preventing the closure of the Tuscaloosa airport and reestablishing the Gees Bend Ferry.  He also fought for the expansion of Alabama’s military installations.  He also continued to support legislation that would help Alabama’s urban poor.  He called for a Southern Rural Development Commission, modeled after the Appalachian Regional Commission to assist economic development in rural communities in ten southern states.

After a 1997 unauthorized trip to Libya, the House of Representatives’ International Relations Committee and Committee on Standards of Official Conduct investigated Hilliard, but both committees later dropped their investigations. In 2001, Hilliard admitted to violating campaign staffing and financing rules to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

In 2002 Hilliard lost his congressional seat to Artur Davis, a Harvard-trained lawyer and former assistant district attorney.  After the election he returned to his law firm and worked as well as a mortgage banker.

About the Author

Author Profile

Michelle Granshaw is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. She is affiliate faculty with the Global Studies Center, the European Union Center of Excellence/European Studies Center, Gender, Sexuality, and Women Studies Program, and Cultural Studies. At Pitt, she teaches in the BA, MFA, and PhD programs and mentors student dramaturgs. Granshaw was honored to receive the University of Pittsburgh’s 2021 Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award.

As a cultural historian, her research focuses on disenfranchised, and migrant communities and how they shaped and were influenced by the embodied and imaginative practices within theatre and performance. Her research interests include U.S. theatre, popular entertainment, and performance; performances of race, ethnicity, gender, and class; global and diasporic performance; and historiography.

Granshaw’s articles have appeared in Theatre Survey, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Popular Entertainment Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Topics, and the New England Theatre Journal. In 2014, Granshaw was awarded the American Theatre and Drama Society Vera Mowry Roberts Award for Research and Publication for her Theatre Survey (January 2014) article “The Mysterious Victory of the Newsboys: The Grand Duke Theatre’s 1874 Challenge to the Theatre Licensing Law.” Her book, Irish on the Move: Performing Mobility in American Variety Theatre (University of Iowa Press, 2019) argues that nineteenth-century American variety theatre formed a crucial battleground for anxieties about mobility, immigration, and ethnic community in the United States. It was named a finalist for the 2019 Theatre Library Association George Freedley Memorial Book Award and supported by grants and fellowships including the Hibernian Research Award from the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, American Theatre and Drama Society Faculty Travel Award, and Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship. “Inventing the Tramp: The Early Tramp Comic on the Variety Stage,” part of Irish on the Move’sfirst chapter, also won the 2018 Robert A. Schanke Theatre Research Award at the Mid-America Theatre Conference. Currently, she is working on a new monograph titled The Fight for Desegregation: Race, Freedom, and the Theatre After the Civil War. In November 2022, she received an American Society for Theatre Research Research Fellowship in support of the project.

Granshaw currently serves on the Executive Board for the American Theatre and Drama Society (term 2021-5) and co-organizes ATDS’s First Book Bootcamp and Career Conversations series.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Granshaw, M. (2009, December 09). Earl Hilliard (1942- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hilliard-earl-1942/

Source of the Author's Information:

Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2008); Daniel Donaghy, “Earl Hilliard,” in Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); “Earl F. Hilliard,” Ebony Magazine, January 1993.

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