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Over seven terms, she garnered millions in funds in helping to revitalize the city. But the political scandals of her son, an ex-mayor, came to shadow her career.
Oct. 10, 2025, 6:56 p.m. ET
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, a former Democratic congresswoman from Detroit who brought millions in federal funds to her hometown, but whose career was undone partly by the legal travails of her indicted son, Detroit’s ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, died on Tuesday in Fayetteville, Ga. She was 80.
Her death, at the home she shared with her daughter, Ayanna, was from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her family said in an announcement.
Ms. Kilpatrick served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2011, sitting for most of that time on the Appropriations Committee and using that perch to garner funds for Detroit: for commuter rail and new bus lines, the Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University and other projects.
Between 2008 and 2010 alone, she secured more than $70 million in earmarks for her district. Her former spokeswoman in Congress, Kim Trent, estimated in an interview that Ms. Kilpatrick brought $2.5 billion to Detroit, helping to revitalize the city.
“The congresswoman’s former office is now a Gucci store,” Ms. Trent said. “She played a transformational role.”
In a struggling city that was to declare bankruptcy in 2013 — the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history — her funneling of federal dollars to Detroit was described by analysts as vital to the city’s survival.
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“These were funds that Detroit did not have, and it is something that a city like Detroit desperately needed,” Eric Foster, a longtime Detroit political consultant, said in an interview.
A disciple of Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and a member of a politically conscious congregation, the Shrine of the Black Madonna, Ms. Kilpatrick was a key figure in the ascendancy of the city’s Black political class, and in defending it.
In 2005, as scandal was engulfing her son — thousands in expenses on the city’s credit card, extravagant parties at the mayor’s mansion, the appointment of dozens of friends and family to government posts — she told a crowd at a re-election rally, “Don’t let too many people talk about y’all’s boy.”
In Congress, Ms. Kilpatrick was elected chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus in 2007. After Representative William Jefferson of New Orleans was indicted on bribery charges in June that year, she spoke up for him, saying his case should be “examined in a court of law instead of the chambers of public opinion.”
During her seven terms in Congress, she also successfully pushed for aid to Africa and Haiti. “She had a global lens,” Ms. Trent said.
Her style could be tough. In a speech to Black trade unionists in Detroit in 2010, Ms. Kilpatrick urged the audience to “come up there and organize and fight, and be a part of something.”
And as a veteran politician — she had already served 17 years in the Michigan House of Representatives before going to Congress — she “knew how to work the room,” said Sherry Gay Dagnogo, Detroit’s current ombudsman, who described Ms. Kilpatrick as her mentor. She recalled Ms. Kilpatrick advising aspiring politicians to work hard and arrive early, telling them, “The deals are made before the meeting starts.”
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But the scandals surrounding her son eventually proved to be an insurmountable hurdle. Convicted in 2008 of perjury and obstruction of justice, Kwame Kilpatrick was forced to resign from the mayor’s office that September. He was put on probation, and then sentenced to prison in May 2010 for violating his probation. The next month, he indicted by a federal grand jury on fraud and tax evasion charges. More corruption charges followed in December of that year. His father, Bernard Kilpatrick, Ms. Kilpatrick’s ex-husband, was also indicted in the same scheme.
In August 2010, Ms. Kilpatrick was defeated in the Democratic primary by State Senator Hansen Clarke, gaining 41 percent of the vote to Mr. Clarke’s 47 percent. Her son’s misdeeds had been an issue in the race.
In 2013, Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to an additional 28 years in prison, but the sentence was commuted by President Trump in 2021, and Mr. Kilpatrick was released. He endorsed Mr. Trump’s re-election bid in 2024.
Of Ms. Kilpatrick’s 2010 defeat, Ms. Trent said, “I don’t think we can deny the fact that some voters associated her with issues that her son had.”
“She is a mother and she loves her children,” she added. “She was never going to walk away from her child.”
Carolyn Jean Cheeks was born on June 25, 1945, in Detroit to Marvell Cheeks Jr., an autoworker, and Willa Mae Cheeks, a beautician.
After graduating from the High School of Commerce in Detroit in 1963, she earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Western Michigan University in 1972 and a master’s in the same field from the University of Michigan in 1977.
Briefly a schoolteacher in Detroit, Ms. Kilpatrick won election to Michigan’s House of Representatives in 1978, and then served nine terms. She became the first Black woman to serve on that chamber’s Appropriations Committee.
She ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1996 Democratic primary, defeating the incumbent, Barbara-Rose Collins, a fellow parishioner of the Shrine of the Black Madonna. Ms. Collins was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for campaign finance violations.
In addition to her son and daughter, Ayanna, Ms. Kilpatrick is survived by her younger sister, Marsha Cheeks, a former Michigan state representative, and six grandchildren. She and her husband divorced in 1981.
“Her strength was in bringing the money home,” said Ms. Dagnogo, the Detroit ombudsman. “She was a stalwart in that regard. She epitomized strength and influence.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Adam Nossiter has been bureau chief in Kabul, Paris, West Africa and New Orleans, and is now a Domestic Correspondent on the Obituaries desk.
