Maxine Waters

Maxine Waters, born in 1938, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from California (1991- ). Waters was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She moved in 1961 to Los Angeles, where she worked in a garment factory and for the telephone company. In 1966 Waters became an assistant teacher for Head Start, a federally sponsored program intended to provide preschool education for children from culturally and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Waters earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1970 from California State University in Los Angeles. In 1976 she won election to the California Assembly, where she served until winning the open House seat in California’s 29th Congressional District in 1990. After redistricting in 1992, the 29th District was renumbered as the 35th District.

The 35th District includes part of South Central Los Angeles, including the neighborhood of Watts, as well as the cities of Hawthorne, Inglewood, and Gardena. Inglewood is a predominately black, middle-class city of 114,467 and the home of the Great Western Forum, a sports arena that hosts the Los Angeles Lakers professional basketball team. Gardena is the site of the U.S. headquarters of Honda Motor Co. Overwhelmingly Democratic and low-income, the 35th District was recorded as 54 percent Hispanic, 35 percent black, and 4 percent Asian by the 2000 census.