Keith Ellison

Keith Maurice Ellison (born 4 August 1963 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American lawyer and Democratic-Farmer-Labor politician serving since 2019 as the 30th attorney general of Minnesota. ^{1 2} He was the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress and the first African American representative from Minnesota. ¹ No source used here names a school or madhhab for him, so his data record leaves his faith as unknown. ¹

Ellison, the third of five sons, was raised Catholic in Detroit by his father Leonard, a psychiatrist, and his mother Clida, a social worker; his family was active in the civil-rights movement, and his maternal grandfather organised voters for the NAACP in Louisiana despite death threats and cross burnings. ¹ He graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy in 1981, took a bachelor's degree in economics at Wayne State University in 1986, and took his law degree at the University of Minnesota in 1990. ^{1 2} At 19, while at Wayne State, he converted from Catholicism to Islam, later explaining that he had looked at the social circumstances of the country and at what might inform social change and justice, and found Islam. ¹

He worked for three years as a litigator at Lindquist & Vennum, specialising in civil rights, employment and criminal defence, then became executive director of Minneapolis's Legal Rights Center, which defends indigent clients, and later practised trial law at Hassan & Reed. ¹ In 2002 he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives for district 58B and was re-elected in 2004. ^{1 2}

In 2006 Ellison won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor endorsement and primary and then the general election for Minnesota's 5th congressional district, becoming the first Muslim elected to Congress and the first African American elected to the House from Minnesota. ¹ His ceremonial swearing-in used an English translation of the Qur'an that had belonged to President Thomas Jefferson, a decision that drew both praise and criticism. ¹ In Congress he co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus, served on the Financial Services Committee, and pursued credit reform — his provision against universal default became law in the Credit CARD Act of 2009 — and the Money Remittances Improvement Act of 2014, which eased international money transfers for diaspora communities. ¹ In 2017 he ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee, lost to Tom Perez, and served as the committee's deputy chair from 2017 to 2018. ¹

Ellison was elected attorney general of Minnesota in 2018 — the first African American elected to partisan statewide office in Minnesota and the first Muslim in the United States to win statewide office — took office on 7 January 2019, and was re-elected in 2022 with 50.4 per cent of the vote. ^{1 2} His office led the prosecution arising from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, the case that made him a national figure beyond Minnesota. ¹

This section sets out positions and responses as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum.

Ellison's 2017 candidacy for the Democratic National Committee chair prompted renewed scrutiny of his past statements and of his student-era association with the Nation of Islam. ¹ The Anti-Defamation League opposed his candidacy over a 2010 speech asking why U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East should turn on a country of seven million people, which it read as a reference to Israel; a major Democratic donor called him antisemitic and anti-Israel, while reporters at several outlets described the attacks as a smear campaign, his rivals said the donor should apologise, and Senator Chuck Schumer replied that Ellison had supported pro-Israel policies in the party. ¹ CNN reported that it found no antisemitic writings or public statements by Ellison and cited his public rejection of the Nation of Islam for its propagation of bigoted and antisemitic ideas. ¹ Earlier in his career he was reprimanded by Minnesota's campaign-finance board for unreported contributions and misclassified disbursements in his state-house campaigns, was fined for late filings, and had tax liens placed on his home for unpaid income taxes in five years between 1992 and 2000, later paying more than $18,000. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.