User:Caitlinloh/Lottie Shackelford

Early life
Lottie Lee Holt was born on April 30, 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father, Curtis Holt, Sr., worked for the Union Pacific Railroad as a porter and a chef and drove trucks. Her mother, Bernice Linzy, worked in a school cafeteria, at a factory, and as a laboratory assistant. Holt graduated from the segregated Horace Mann High School in 1958. She then studied microbiology at Philander Smith College in Little Rock but left after the death of her father in 1963. She later reenrolled at Philander Smith College and her received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration in 1979. She was a Senior Fellow at the Arkansas Institute of Politics; and a fellow at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 1983.

Holt married Airman Calvin Henry Shackelford, Jr., who was serving in the U.S. Air Force, in 1958. They have one son, Russel, and two daughters, Karla and Karen. The couple divorced in 1984.

Career
Lottie Shackelford's interest in politics stemmed from her participation in the Little Rock Parent Teacher Association (PTA) while her children were in school. Shackelford was profoundly influenced by her experience in Little Rock's schools during the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, and she used this experience to inform her activism in the school district. She eventually served as president of the PTA Council in the mid-1970s. During this time, she also began participating in local political campaigns.

Shackelford herself first ran for office in the 1974 election for Little Rock's Board of Directors, which she lost. In 1978, she was appointed to a vacant position on the Board. She was officially elected to the position in a citywide contest in 1980, then reelected twice in 1984 and 1988. In January 1987, Shackelford was chosen by the Board as Mayor of Little Rock. With this appointment, Shackelford became Little Rock's first female mayor and the first woman of color to be mayor of a major American city. She served as mayor until 1991. Shackelford was a leading member of the National League of Cities during her time as mayor.

Shackelford has worked with the Democratic Party at the state level, serving as secretary, vice chair, and chair of the Arkansas State Democratic Committee. She also held the position of secretary in the National Association of State Democratic Chairs.

On a national level, Shackelford has been a member of the DNC since the early 1980s. She served as Co-Chair of the Platform Committee in 1984 and of the Rules Committee in 1988, and on the Resolutions Committee. Shackelford has been a Delegate to every Democratic National Convention since 1980, and she was Co-Chair of the 1988 Democratic National Convention, held in Atlanta, Georgia. Shackelford served as DNC Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation from the early 1990s to the late 2000s. In this role, she attended political forums across Europe and Asia and observed European elections following the collapse of the Soviet empire. Since 2014, Shackelford has served as the Chair of the Women's Caucus of the DNC. Her candidacy was supported by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC Chair at the time.

Shackelford began working on political campaigns for Bill Clinton in the early 1980s. In 1992, she was a deputy manager for Clinton's 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 in Vienna, Austria and to the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. She was the first African-American woman to hold the latter position.

''Shackelford is Senior Executive Vice President of Global USA, Inc., and is a member of various civic and community organizations, including the National Urban League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and The Links, Incorporated. She has an extensive record of serving on numerous boards and commissions, and is currently on the Board of Directors of Medicis Pharmaceutical Corporation, Phoenix, Arizona.''

Shackelford is a founding member of the Women's Foundation of Arkansas, established in 1998.