Lottie Shackelford

Lottie H. Shackelford (born April 30, 1941) is an American politician who in 1987 was the first woman appointed Mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), making her the first African-American woman to serve in that role. She also is the longest serving Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), having held the office for 20 years.

Education
Shackelford received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was a Senior Fellow at the Arkansas Institute of Politics and a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Career
Shackelford's political career began in 1978, when she was elected to the Board of Directors for the City of Little Rock, Arkansas. She was re-elected citywide three times before becoming the city's first woman Mayor. During her tenure in local government, Shackelford directed liaison activities for minority businesses and held leadership positions at the National League of Cities. She also presented papers on local government, economic development, and electoral politics nationally and internationally, and led economic trade missions and conducted lecture tours in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

For the past several decades, Shackelford has worked with the Democratic Party at the state and national level. She served as Secretary, Vice Chair, and Chair of the Arkansas State Democratic Committee, and was elected Secretary of the National Association of State Democratic Chairs. She was the first woman and second African American to serve as Mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas, from January 1987 to December 1988. A member of the DNC since the early 1980s, Ms. Shackelford served as Co-Chair of the Platform Committee in 1984 and the Rules Committee in 1988, and she currently serves on the Resolutions Committee.

Shackelford's experience also includes advising presidential candidates, working on White House transition teams, and representing a Presidential administration abroad. In 1992, she was a Deputy Campaign manager for the Clinton/Gore Presidential Campaign and was later appointed Co-Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Clinton Transition Team. In 1993, President Clinton appointed Shackelford as a US Delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Vienna, Austria.

In her role as DNC Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation, Shackelford travels across the country and around the world, sharing the Democratic Party's message and engaging voters in the political process. She regularly participates in political forums of other countries, including Azerbaijan, Russia, West Germany and Taiwan, and she has observed elections in Romania and the Baltic States.

Awards

 * Registry of Outstanding Men and Women, Esquire Magazine
 * Woman of the Year, Arkansas Democrat newspaper
 * 1993: Arkansas Black Hall of Fame inductee
 * 1998: Mary Church Terrell Award, Delta Sigma Theta
 * 2016: Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame inductee