REP. BOBBY L. RUSH (D-IL)
Bobby Lee Rush (born November 23, 1946) is an American politician, activist, pastor, and the U.S. Representative for Illinois’s 1st congressional district, serving in Congress for more than two decades.
A civil rights activist during the 1960s, Rush co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers.[1]
Rush was first elected to Congress in 1992. He has since won consecutive re-elections. His district was originally located principally on the South Side of Chicago, with a population from 2003 to early 2013 that was 65 percent African-American, a higher proportion than any other congressional district in the nation. In 2011 the Illinois General Assembly redistricted this area following the 2010 census. While still minority-majority, since early 2013 it is 51.3 per cent African American, 9.8 per cent Latino and 2 per cent Asian. He was re-elected in 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, Rush is the only politician to have defeated Barack Obama in an election, which he did in the 2000 Democratic primary for Illinois’s 1st congressional district.
Rush was born on November 23, 1946, in Albany, Georgia. After his parents separated when Rush was 7 years old, his mother took him and his siblings to Chicago, Illinois, joining the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South in the first part of the 20th century. In 1963, Rush dropped out of high school before graduating; he joined the U.S. Army. While stationed in Chicago in 1966, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had helped obtain national civil rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1965. In 1968, he went AWOL from the Army and co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers. He later finished his service, receiving an honorable discharge from the Army.
