Attorney General Eric Holder and wife Dr. Sharon Malone are this year’s No. 5 “power couple” as part of a series in Huffington Post’s Black Voices.
Attorney General Eric Holder and Dr. Sharon Malone (Getty Images)
Dubbed “Washington’s Second Most Powerful Couple,” presumably behind President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, HuffPo’s Black Voices notes Holder’s distinction as the first black U.S. Attorney General.
Black Voices also notes Malone, who is an OB/GYN in Washington, earlier this year appeared in a PBS documentary, “Slavery by Another Name,” which documents the systematic imprisonment of African Americans who were thrown in jail for long periods of time on trumped-up charges in the deep South. Malone is the sister of the late Vivian Malone Jones, who was the first black student to graduate from the University of Alabama against the orders of segregationist Gov. George C. Wallace. Jones later went on to a long career at the Justice Department.
After graduating from Harvard University, Malone worked as a systems engineer at IBM. She then attended Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and during that time she met Holder.
Holder is poised to stay on for at least a year into the president’s second term. In an Essence Magazine profile earlier this year, Holder spoke of the importance of the couple’s roots.
“The reality is, I’m the Attorney General of the United States. She’s Dr. Sharon Malone. But at the end of the day, I’m still Ricky from 101st Street, and she’s still Sharon from St. Anthony Street,” Holder said.
Other couples named in Black Voices list include: NBA star Carmelo Anthony and TV personality Lala Anthony; journalists Donna Britt and Kevin Merida; and musicians Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats (aka Kasseem David Dean), among others.
