The Trinidad-born trailblazer who rose to become California's highest-ranking black politician died Sunday at age 86 in Los Angeles after a period of declining health, his wife said.
A self-described civil rights champion, Dymally decorated his Sacramento office with black-and-white pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. He introduced the bill that lowered the voting age in California to 18 and wrote the resolution by which California ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.
He became California's first foreign-born black assemblyman in 1962, its first black state senator in 1966 and its first and only black lieutenant governor in 1974. He won a congressional seat in 1980, representing Compton and its surrounding area, one of the most solidly Democratic bastions in Los Angeles County.
