Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
When she was sworn in as the 18th U.S. secretary of transportation in January 2017, Elaine L. Chao became the first Asian-American woman and the first Chinese-American to hold that position. (During her tenure as U.S. secretary of labor from 2001 to 2009, she was the first-ever person in both of those categories to be... Continue Reading →
In 1975, William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. was appointed by President Gerald Ford to serve as the fourth U.S. secretary of transportation. He was the first African-American to serve in that role and second only to Robert C. Weaver, who was secretary of housing and urban development under President Lyndon B. Johnson, as the first African-American... Continue Reading →
January 16, 1967 In the presence of a large crowd in the East Room of the White House, Alan S. Boyd was sworn in as the first U.S. secretary of transportation by Judge James Durfee of the U.S. Court of Claims. The 42-year-old Boyd stepped into the job just a couple of months before the... Continue Reading →
Norman Yoshio Mineta was born in San Jose, California, in 1931 to Japanese immigrant parents who were prohibited by the Asian Exclusion Act from becoming U.S. citizens. During World War II, Mineta and his family were forced to relocate to the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming along with thousands of other Japanese immigrants and... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 