Mervyn M Dymally

Mervyn M. Dymally, the Trinidad-born former teacher whose groundbreaking if sometimes controversial political career spanned more than four decades and included a stint as California’s only black lieutenant governor, has died. He was 86. born in Cedros, Trinidad, British West Indies, May 12, 1926; attended Cedros Government School, Trinidad; graduated from St. Benedict and Naparima Secondary, San Fernando, Trinidad, 1944; B.A., California State University, Los Angeles, 1954; M.A., California State University, Sacramento, 1969; Ph.D., United States International University, San Diego, 1978; president, Mervyn M. Dymally Co., Inc., 1979-1981; teacher; lecturer; served in the California State legislature, 1963-1966; State senator, 1967-1975; Lieutenant Governor, California, 1975-1979; elected as a Democrat to the Ninety-seventh and to the five succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1981-January 3, 1993); was not a candidate for renomination in 1992 to the One Hundred Third Congress; member of the California state assembly, 2002 to present. Dymally, who became a leader in the Los Angeles area’s ascendant African American political establishment in the early 1960s and served in both houses of the state Legislature and in Congress. Dymally’s political longevity and ability to return time and again to public office had him winning elections well into what many people see as their retirement years. His latest comeback, at age 76, was perhaps his most dramatic. In 2002, dissatisfied with the potential candidates for the Compton-area Assembly seat he first won in 1962 and dismayed at the dropping numbers of blacks in the Legislature, Dymally jumped into the race himself and won. The end came instead at the hands of a rival nearly 30 years his junior: Termed out of the Assembly in 2008, Dymally, then 82, lost a grueling Democratic primary election for a state Senate seat to Rod Wright.