Ronald Vernie Dellums was born on November 24, 1935 in Oakland, California to Willa Terry Dellums and Vernie Dellums. His father Vernie Dellums was a longshoreman, and his mother was a labor organizer. As a child, Ron attended St. Patrick Catholic School in Oakland.
After high school Ron Dellums served in the United States Marine Corps from 1954 to 1956 after he was denied the college scholarship he had sought. After service in the Marines Dellums, with the help of the G.I Bill and an outside job, attended San Francisco State College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960. This was followed by an M.A. in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley in 1962.
In the same year Dellums began his career as a psychiatric social worker in the California Department of Mental Hygiene in Berkeley. Dellums also taught at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley. His work soon led him to become involved in community politics. In 1967 at 32, Dellums was elected to the Berkeley City Council. He quickly became known as the spokesperson for African American community affairs and for his radical political beliefs.
After only three years on the Berkeley City Council, Dellums decided to run for Congress. With high name recognition -- partly because his uncle, C.L. Dellums was a well known East Bay political activist and founding member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters -- and with crucial campaign assistance from Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as from Berkeley’s powerful anti-Vietnam War organizations, 35-year-old Dellums was elected to Congress.
Dellums quickly emerged as one of the most radical and outspoken Congressmen in Washington. Within weeks of his election, Dellums called for Congressional investigations into alleged war crimes in Vietnam and co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus. Two years later he began a long campaign to end the apartheid policies of South Africa
