parents divorced when he was young, and his mother soon remarried to a man she met at a national conference on black power in 1968. Following this conference, his mother and her new husband decided to change their family name to Fattah and the boy's name to Chaka Fattah. His adoptive father, David Fattah, and mother, Falaka Fattah (born Frances Brown, also known as "Queen Mother" Falaka Fattah), are community activists in West Philadelphia, where they are building an "urban Boys' Town" through their organization, the House of Umoja. He has five brothers. Pennsylvania State Legislature Fattah served as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the 192nd district from 1983 to 1988, and as a State Senator for the 7th district from 1988 to 1994. In 1987, Fattah founded the Graduate Opportunity Initiative Conference, an annual three-day informational and scholarship conference which aims to significantly increase the enrollment of under-represented graduate students studying Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM fields). The conference was designed to encourage minority students’ interest in STEM graduate and professional schools. U.S. House of Representatives Elections In 1991, State Senator Fattah decided to run for Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district in the special election that was held after Democratic U.S. Congressman William Gray decided to resign. On November 5, 1991, City Councilman Lucien Edward Blackwell won the election with a plurality of 39% of the vote defeating Fattah (28%), John F. White (28%), and Nadine Smith-Bulford (5%). In 1994, Fattah decided to challenge Blackwell in the Democratic primary. He defeated the incumbent 58%–42%. He won the general election with 86% of the vote. After that, he was re-elected every two years with at least 86% of the vote. He was never challenged in the Democratic primary until 2016, when he lost to Dwight E. Evans. Tenure Fattah represented the 2nd district in Pennsylvania, an overwhelmingly Democratic district, in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2016. Fattah endorsed Barack Obama for President in 2008. GEAR Up and education He is the architect of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. In his first years in the U.S. House of Representatives, Fattah introduced and passed into law Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP), a college awareness and preparedness program. Since its inception, more than $4 billion in federal funds have been distributed to assist 12million students in