Slater, Rodney

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Rodney Slater
1955–

Secretary of transportation, lawyer

Overcoming the poverty and segregation of the Arkansas Mississippi Delta region, Rodney Slater gained national prominence as the chief administrator of the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and the secretary of transportation during President Clinton's second term. His rise to distinction resulted from his skillful understanding of the transportation industry and his ability to form coalitions in an environment of fierce competition and rivalry.

Rodney Earl Slater was born out of wedlock to Velma Slater on February 23, 1955 in Tutwyler, Mississippi. His mother soon moved with her newborn son to the town of Marianna in her home state of Arkansas. Shortly afterward, Velma married Earl Brewer, a mechanic and maintenance man, who fathered Slater's four halfsiblings—two brothers and two sisters. Brewer instilled in Rodney Slater a strong work ethic. Slater remarked in an interview with Ebony: "[his father] was the person who was there. He was the person who worked five and six jobs to make it possible for my brothers and sisters to enjoy the things that were important." By age six, Slater had hired himself out to work in the cotton fields. He was strongly influenced by the elders of the neighborhood with whom he worked and lived. When Slater was in the third grade, his family moved into a public housing project where he remained throughout his childhood.

As a youngster growing up in Marianna, Slater showed a knack for public speaking. At age six, he read Bible passages on a radio program broadcasted from the church he attended. As a fourth grader, Slater was an accomplished public speaker, reading from the works of James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and others. Slater also became interested in government. Slater's former classmate, Carolyn Elliot, recalled in an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette interview, that "a sixth grade teacher named Willie Neal … challenged us to know about government, to know about ourselves. I think that probably was a turning point."

When Slater was in the tenth grade, the school district consolidated its white and black high schools. Racial tensions were high in Marianna at the time. When blacks boycotted white-owned businesses, Governor Dale Bumpers sent in state police to suppress the conflict. A dozen businesses in the city closed as a result of the boycott. On January 13, 1972, during Slater's junior year at Lee Senior High School, a sit-down strike by students to gain permission to hold an assembly in honor of Martin Luther King's birthday became disorderly when police used high-pressure water hoses to break up the strike. The incident led Slater and others to boycott the school. Slater and over two hundred other students were arrested and put on trial for inciting a riot. Through the efforts of African American civil rights attorney John Walker, the charges were dropped. Slater's great admiration for John Walker and the courtroom experience inspired him to pursue a career as a lawyer.

Slater enrolled at Eastern Michigan University in 1973 on a football scholarship. At Eastern Michigan, Slater excelled both athletically, as co-captain of the football team, and academically. Dennis Beagan, a college speech professor, was so impressed with Slater's performance in class that he offered him a spot on the school's nationally recognized forensics team. Slater made it to the national quarterfinals in the "interpretation of prose" category. At graduation in 1977, he was given the Eastern Michigan University Top Ten Student Award.

Slater returned to Arkansas and attended law school at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He was mentored there by William Haley, the second black ever to graduate from the law school. Slater's knack for developing relationships with older, more experienced leaders helped him to excel professionally.

Immediately after graduation in 1979, he began working at the Arkansas State Attorney General's Office in Fayetteville. In 1980, Slater's future father-in-law, state representative Henry Wilkins of Pine Bluff, introduced him to Arkansas governor and future U.S. president Bill Clinton. Slater quickly gained a good rapport with the governor. Clinton was later quoted in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette as saying that he "put a lot of trust in him when he was young because I knew—when he was first working for me with the black community—that the older ministers, the older doctors, the older business people, the people that he dealt with, I knew they would trust him."

Becomes First Black on Highway Commission

In March 1982, Slater left his post in the attorney general's office to serve as deputy campaign manager for Clinton's second gubernatorial campaign. Following the successful campaign, Slater was named special assistant to Governor Clinton in 1983 and was promoted to executive assistant in 1985. In 1987, Slater was hired by Arkansas State University in Jonesboro to serve as the director of government relations and also appointed by Governor Clinton as the first black member of the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Commission.

As a member of the state highway commission and an administrator at Arkansas State, Slater focused on the economic development and transportation issues of the state's rural Mississippi Delta region. At Slater's U.S. Transportation Secretary Confirmation hearing, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Arkansas republican Senator Tim Hutchinson praised Slater's role on the highway commission as "putting aside political differences to do what was best for the state." Hutchinson also said that "Rodney, without hesitation, tackled the great challenge of improving a poor rural state's infrastructure … He took on that challenge, not trying to please, but trying to do the right thing." Slater was also instrumental in initiating the "Mississippi Delta Symposium on Its People, Its Problems, Its Potential" at Arkansas State University. The symposium brought together a wide array of business leaders and local and state politicians to discuss current topics regarding economic development and job growth. As a result of his service, Slater gained the respect of legislators and business leaders throughout the state for his interpersonal skills and putting people first. He served as chairman of the commission from 1992 to 1993.

Following the 1992 election, President Bill Clinton named Slater the first African American administrator of the Federal Highway Administration in June 1993. As administrator, Slater successfully worked with Congress to pass the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995, which assigned 160,000 miles of roads in the United States as part of a national highway system. More importantly, the selected roads were eligible for $13 billion in additional federal funding. During Slater's term, the infrastructure investment in federal highway construction increased from $21 billion to $25 billion. Along with the increased funding, Slater and his staff worked to improve financing and contracting techniques to streamline the contracting process and improve quality.

Despite Slater's popularity and success on Capitol Hill, he was harshly criticized by consumer advocates led by Ralph Nader, who sent a letter to President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore calling for the firing of Slater because of his support of an amendment to the National Highway System Designation Act to abolish the national speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour. According to Traffic World, Nader also accused Slater of "currying industry's favor at the expense of motorists' safety" regarding the trucking industry's lobbying efforts to increase the maximum allowable weight limit for trucks from 80,000 pounds to 175,000 pounds. Slater's response to Nader's criticism was that he was only carrying out the implementation of policies that had already been put in motion by Congress.

Chronology

1955: Born in Tutwyler, Mississippi on February 23
1972: Arrested with other students and put on trial in Marianna, Georgia on riot charges
1977: Graduates with B.A. from Eastern Michigan University
1979: Graduates with J.D. from University of Arkansas Law School
1980–82: Works in Arkansas State Attorney General's Office
1982–83: Serves as deputy campaign manager for Governor Bill Clinton
1983–87: Serves as special assistant to Governor Bill Clinton
1987–93: Serves as director of Government Relations, Arkansas State University
1993–97: Serves as administrator for the U.S. Federal Highway Administration
1997–2000: Serves as U.S. secretary of transportation
2001: Becomes partner in Patton Boggs law firm

Named U.S. Secretary of Transportation

In 1997, Slater was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate to be the thirteenth U.S. secretary of transportation. He was the second federal highway administrator (John Volpe was the first), and the second African American (Bill Coleman was the first) to serve in the secretary post. Within the first eighteen months of his term, Congress passed the largest highway bill in U.S. history. The Transportation Equity Act guaranteed a record $200 billion in funds for surface transportation. Also, department negotiators led by Slater helped to avert a workers' strike against Amtrak and successfully lobbied for the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act to improve the country's passenger rail system.

Another notable accomplishment of Slater's administration was increasing the number of open skies agreements with countries around the world to expand the aviation system and remove restrictions on commercial airline travel, including the first agreement with an African nation (Tanzania). Slater organized the first major international aviation conference in nearly fifty-five years to encourage countries to move beyond bilateral open skies agreements toward regional multilateral agreements. The first multilateral open skies agreement was signed shortly thereafter between the United States, Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, and Brunei.

On the domestic front, Slater worked to decrease the highway fatality rate and to expand safety regulations on motor vehicles. The Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999 established the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to enforce safety regulations and maximize public participation in motor safety. As a result, the National Safety Council's 1999 Injury Facts publication reported that seat belt use nationally rose to an all-time high of 70 percent.

After the 2000 presidential election, Slater left the Department of Transportation to join the law firm of Patton Boggs as head of its transportation practice group in Washington D.C. Although he was rumored to have political aspirations, he continued to stay focused on issues of transportation. In 2005, Slater agreed to serve as a representative for the ground workers union of Northwest Airlines on the company's board of directors.

Slater's rise from poverty has been an inspiration to many people. Thomas Donohue, president of the American Trucking Association, told the New York Times that "[Slater's] earned this by coming from very, very poor roots n Arkansas, working his way through college and law school, working on the campaign, and taking a real job in Washington…. He took a real job building highways in this country and he did a great job."