Former state Rep. Gloria Fox, whose political career serving Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood spanned three decades, died this week at age 82.
Fox was elected to represent the 7th Suffolk District in 1985 and served until her retirement in 2016, becoming Massachusetts’ longest-serving Black woman lawmaker. Her family announced her passing in a statement Tuesday, saying that she aligned all of her work to serve the people of her district and her family.
Former Speaker of the Massachusetts House Bob DeLeo, who served on Beacon Hill alongside Fox for many years, joined GBH’s All Things Considered guest host Saraya Wintersmith to discuss her life and legacy. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Saraya Wintersmith: I want to start with another part of the statement from Fox’s family. They describe her as a fierce advocate and champion of Roxbury. How does that track with your experiences with her in the State House?
Bob DeLeo: Very much so. The only thing I would ask you to do is when you say a “FIERCE ADVOCATE,” put it all in capital letters and underlined. ... She became really a voice for many disenfranchised people from throughout the commonwealth. She was the type of representative who, you know, I would see walking, and she’d say to me, whether as chair of Ways and Means [Committee] or then as speaker, “Hey, did you remember that bill I spoke to you about yesterday?” That’s just the way she was. She was nonstop in terms of her role as a representative for the people who put her there.
Wintersmith: What was your first impression of Gloria Fox when you met her?
DeLeo: The more I got to know Gloria, I got to appreciate her more and more. You know, some people — whether it’s in Massachusetts or whether it’s nationally — when they come to the State House or Capitol Hill, it sort of becomes a new place … you know, they get caught up in terms of what’s going on in the state or federally.
That’s true with Gloria as well, but while she was in that building, she also had a foot in her district at all times in terms of legislation or ideas she could do for that particular day, every day, to help her district.
Wintersmith: I want to ask you about a specific thing that you might recall as chair of Ways and Means. You have your process for determining what the financial priorities for the years are. Is there a specific memory that sticks with you about working with Rep. Fox as you sat in that seat?
DeLeo: I do. As chair of Ways and Means, I took it upon myself to meet with each and every member, asking them to talk to me about what were their budget priorities.
I can remember Rep. Fox, you know, coming in, and I knew what I was going to encounter — so much so that I spoke to my administrative assistant and said, “I’m going to tell you, I try to keep these meetings at half an hour, but I will tell you that probably this one is going to go on a little bit longer, so don’t get aggravated with me.” Sure enough, I said, “OK, let’s talk about your three major priorities.” And she looked at me, and she said, “Well, I can’t talk about three priorities.” Actually, if I remember correctly, I think it was almost like a booklet. She had so many priorities that she felt extremely … that they were all very, very important. I said, “Well, let’s talk about your most important.” And then she started from the first, and then, she could go — instead of three, she probably went through maybe 103. And, you know, each time, I would be smiling at her because I knew there was no way that she was ever going to leave, even if I asked her, until she got her say and made sure that she emphasized with me, as she did with all the other members, what was important.
[Representing] a district such as hers required a whole lot of advocacy to make sure that not only myself as chair of Ways and Means or as speaker, but every single representative knew what were the needs of her district.
Wintersmith: It sounds like you think that she was justified in advocating for multiple priorities, even though your rule was three.
DeLeo: She was. I learned that very quickly because she could make a case for every single one of them — whether it was a particular monetary piece or a legislative piece — that [it] would benefit her particular district. And in doing so, she was benefiting not only her district, but the people of the commonwealth, as well.
Gloria was … you know, although she was not the first Black woman to ever serve, I would still consider her a pioneer representing the disenfranchised people and Black and brown people. She took that job very seriously. And you know what? Thank God she did.
Wintersmith: I want to play you this audio before I ask you this next question. It’s from her 2016 farewell speech on the floor.
Rep. Gloria Fox: I’m happy to say that these have been joyous years in the House of Representatives. I met many, many people that I call and consider my friends.
I have been, in a lot of instances, challenging to work with. Sometimes, I’ve had issues that I’ve brought before each and every one of you, and that’s all good. Sometimes, we’ve had serious debates and conversations. That’s good as well.
I consider it the human exercise to not always agree, but not be disagreeable in your changes in terms of whether or not you feel the same way I do.
Wintersmith: What can your relationship with her teach us more broadly about this idea of civility and working through disagreement, particularly as we’re thinking about a difficult time in this country?
DeLeo: So important. So important. As we’re going in — especially [with] what we’re seeing going on in Washington — Gloria could raise some issues which, at the time, maybe were new, you know, novel to a lot of the folks in the Legislature. Maybe it was an issue that they really weren’t aware of because their particular district didn’t have the same concerns.
What Gloria did was educate. Educate us all into what the people in her district were all about, what were their needs on a daily basis. Yes, she was fierce, but never to the point where I guess you could say it was argumentative that she could make her point, and we could have conversations about it.
At the end of the day, the way she had presented her case was always professional. She had her facts. She had her figures. But at the same token, they never got to the point where people would, you know, be yelling at each other, not listen anymore, and just abruptly end a conversation. She brought us to the conversation. She brought us to the debate. And in doing so, she opened up a lot of eyes in terms of what was going on in the commonwealth.
But again, she was one of the pioneers, I think, who really talked about and made us more aware of some of her concerns: criminal justice reform, voting issues, health disparities, child welfare issues — she lived child welfare issues, being a foster child.
Yes, of course, they were talked about, and we would address them, but probably back when she had begun, it wasn’t as prevalent. When I say she was a pioneer, that’s what I meant. She knew what issues had to be discussed. She knew what she could do to make the lives of people [better] — not only for some, but for all the people of Massachusetts.
Trust me, Gloria Fox was the person who started this discussion years ago, and if it weren’t for people like Gloria Fox, we may not be where we are today relative to those issues.
