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Dellums was the first African American elected to Congress from Northern California and the first openly Socialist Congressman since World War II.

He became a psychiatric social worker and political activist in the African American community beginning in the 1960s. He also taught at the San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Dellums has eight children and stepchildren. One son, Michael, was convicted of a drug-related homicide in 1979, and remains in prison, being repeatedly denied parole due to bad behaviour.

Throughout his career Dellums led campaigns against an array of military projects, arguing that the funds would be better spent on peaceful purposes, especially in American cities.

Other plans to reduce violence include training at-risk youth and ex-offenders for jobs, and intensifying police efforts to get weapons off the streets by cracking down on illegal gun dealers and establishing a city program to buy back guns.

Dellums’ successor, Barbara Lee won the 2000 election by an even larger, 85%-9% margin.

Since his election, a local investigative journalist has criticized the secret nature of the task forces Dellums established, despite having repeatedly vowed to restore “transparency” to city government, and has lodged criticism of disarray among the task forces.

When addressing a town hall-style meeting in 2007, Dellums declared, “I’m giving it everything that I have. If that’s not enough, that’s cool. Recall me and let me get on with my private life.”

Dellums has worked as a lobbyist, which has drawn criticism described in the East Bay Express, a local newspaper. Shortly after leaving office, Dellums began consulting for an international health-care company, Healthcare Management International which invests in health insurance programs in developing countries.

Dellums worked in Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist for clients such as the East Bay Peralta Community College District and AC Transit, the public transit district charged with offering mass transit throughout the East Bay. Other legislative lobbying work:

Dellums’ firm lobbied for Rolls Royce, a company that manufactures military aircraft engines and private automobiles.

Dellums’ company lobbied for the San Francisco International Airport during its attempts to build additional runway capacity, which has been vigorously opposed by environmental groups.

His company has been engaged in community relations work for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: the lab generates and stores radioactive waste and has long had a contentious relationship with its residential neighbors and the Berkeley city council.

Bristol-Myers Squibb, a multinational pharmaceutical corporation.

Dellums lobbied for the Haitian government in 2001–2002 and has worked to support Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected former President of Haiti who was allegedly kidnapped at gunpoint in 2004 by the United States military-intelligence apparatus.

Dellums describes himself as a Socialist. In the 1970s, Dellums was a member of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), an offshoot of the Socialist Party of America. He later became vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which was formed by a merger between the DSOC and the New American Movement, and which works within and outside the Democratic Party. As of 2006, Dellums is no longer a vice-chair of the DSA.

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