Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.), a 12-term member of Congress and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, died Tuesday at 77.
He announced in February that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer, and his condition deteriorated in the last week.
First elected in 1988, Payne represented parts of Newark in New Jersey’s 10th district and led a prominent political family in the state. He was the first African American elected to Congress from New Jersey, and he led the CBC in 1995 and 1996.
“New Jersey has lost one of its greatest leaders in the fight for equality and fairness for all Americans, and one of the greatest advocates for families of the Garden State,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “Donald Payne was a true trailblazer – a champion for education and civil rights who sought to combat injustice all over the world. I will greatly miss my friend and brother.”
Before returning to New Jersey on Friday, Payne was hospitalized in Washington, where a steady stream of CBC members visited, including Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who was “at his bed three or four times in the last week,” according to a source familiar with those visits.
A 24-year veteran of Capitol Hill, Payne is the senior Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s sub-panel on Africa, and his interest in U.S.-Africa relations almost got him killed during a 2009 visit to Somalia.
Leaving Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, Payne became the target of Islamic militants who fired mortar rounds at his plane, according to The New York Times report on the incident. Ten people were injured in the attack; Payne was not among them.
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Congressman Payne’s district went well beyond Newark and included the entire Elizabeth kehillah(shules, yeshivot, kollel, etc) and parts of Hillside(shules, chabad, kollel).