Hazel R. O'Leary

Hazel R. O'Leary

Hazel O'Leary Reid (* 17th May 1937 in Newport News , Virginia ) is a former American politician , which the cabinet of US President Bill Clinton as energy minister belonged. She was the first woman and the first African American to hold this office.

Life and career

Hazel Reid grew up in Virginia as the daughter of a doctor couple with two brothers and two sisters. In 1980 she married John F. O'Leary, former US Deputy Secretary of Energy, who died in 1987. There is a son from marriage.

After graduating from a Law School in Newark , she worked as a prosecutor in New Jersey ; later she became a partner of the financial services provider Coopers & Lybrand . She then belonged to the Carter government as deputy head of the Federal Energy Administration ; after the establishment of the Ministry of Energy, she became head of the Economic Regulatory Administration .

In 1981, Hazel O'Leary and her husband founded the consultancy firm O'Leary & Associates , where she served as vice president and general manager. Between 1989 and 1993 she was the vice president of the Northern States Power Company .

politician

After the Democrats' victory in the 1992 presidential election , President Clinton appointed her to his cabinet as Secretary of Energy . She became popular at the beginning of her tenure when she made public documents from the Cold War era that had been kept under lock and key. These showed that the US government had abused American citizens as human subjects in radioactivity experiments.

However, O'Leary faced political difficulties in 1996 when she had to defend herself before a committee of the Republican- dominated Congress against allegations that she was traveling too much and spending excessive money on her accommodation. In January 1997 she finally resigned from office.

In connection with the campaign fundraising affair of 1996, Hazel O'Leary hit the headlines again. Johnny Chung, one of the main characters in the fundraising scandal, testified that the minister met with representatives from a Chinese oil company after Chung donated $ 25,000 to a charity she sponsored. The FBI urged an investigation into the matter; Attorney General Janet Reno said there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by O'Leary.

Since 2004 Hazel O'Leary has served as President of Fisk University in Nashville , where she herself once studied.

literature

• Jessie Carney Smith (Ed.): Notable Black American women . Gale Research, Detroit 1996, ISBN 0-8103-9177-5 , pp. 506 ff . (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 30, 2020]).

Web links

• Minutes of a hearing before the Congress Committee
• Hazel R. O'Leary in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)