Mervyn Malcolm Dymally, PhD, was born May 12, 1926 in Cedros, Trinidad. A graduate of California State University, Los Angeles with a BA in education, he also earned a MA in government from California State University, Sacramento and a PhD from United States International University, San Diego. During his extraordinary career in government service, he served in the California State Assembly (1962), the first African American member of the California State Senate (1966), Lieutenant Governor (1974), U.S. House of Representatives (1980), and a second term in the California State Assembly (2002). Among his accomplishments in the California State Legislature, was his role in passing legislation that created the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School through a state partnership with UCLA. In 1968, the medical school, now known as the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, became the academic institution for doctor training at L.A. County’s Martin Luther King, Jr. General Hospital, which opened to patients in 1972. He was also one of the founding members of the California Legislative Black Caucus. After retiring from the U.S. House of Representatives, Mervyn Dymally was re-elected forty years after first serving in the California State Legislature, to the Assembly and served until his second retirement in 2008. He died in 2012, at the age of 86.