Early Career
McCall was born in the Roxbury section of Boston, the oldest of six children. His father, Herman McCall, moved to Boston from Georgia, and left the family when Carl McCall was eleven. McCall attended church with Edward Brooke. He attended Dartmouth College on private and ROTC scholarships, and graduated in 1958 with a bachelor's degree in government. During the 1960s, McCall worked as a high school teacher and a bank manager. He taught for six months at Jamaica Plain High School on Sumner Hill in Boston, and then joined the Army. He opened a church in the Dorchester neighborhood. By the late 1960s McCall moved to New York City to work for church outreach. He was appointed by New York Mayor John Lindsay to head the Commission Against Poverty.
During the 1970s, McCall, backed by Harlem political power, Percy Sutton, was elected to three terms as a State Senator representing Harlem and other parts of Manhattan. He left the Senate to accept an appointment from President Jimmy Carter as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations with the rank of Ambassador.
In 1982 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of New York, to run on a ticket with Mario Cuomo. Governor Cuomo then appointed McCall to serve as the state's Commissioner of Human Rights (1983–84).
While serving in the private sector as a vice president for governmental relations with Citicorp (1985–93), McCall accepted an appointment to the New York City Board of Education, where he served as President of the Board from 1991 to 1993.
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