Longtime U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who helped lead federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence and recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday, has died. She was 74.
Lillie Conley, her chief of staff, confirmed Friday night that Jackson Lee, who had pancreatic cancer, had died.
The Democrat had represented her Houston-based district since 1995. She had previously had breast cancer and announced the pancreatic cancer diagnosis on June 2.
“The road ahead will not be easy, but I stand in faith that God will strengthen me,” Jackson Lee said in a statement then.
Jackson Lee had just been elected to the Houston district once represented by Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to Congress from a Southern state since Reconstruction, when she was placed on the high-profile House Judiciary Committee in 1995.
“They just saw me, I guess through my profile, through Barbara Jordan’s work,” Jackson Lee told the Houston Chronicle in 2022. “I thought it was an honor because they assumed I was going to be the person they needed.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who as a congresswoman worked with Jackson Lee on the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement, saying that “our nation lost a tenacious defender of freedom for all.”
“The entire Congress could always count on her for sharp legal analysis and blunt assessment of strategy and reality,” Bass said. “She was a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill and leaves a legacy that will ripple for decades to come.”
Jackson Lee quickly established herself as fierce advocate for women and minorities, and a leader for House Democrats on many social justice issues, including policing reform and reparations for descendants of enslaved people. She led the first rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act in nearly a decade, which included specific protections for Native American and immigrant women and transgender people.
Jackson Lee was also was among the lead lawmakers behind the effort in 2021 to have Juneteenth recognized as the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in 1986. The holiday marks the day in 1865 that the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally learned of their freedom.
A native of Queens, N.Y., Jackson Lee graduated from Yale and earned her law degree at the University of Virginia. She was a judge in Houston before she was elected to the Houston City Council in 1989 and Congress in 1994. She was an advocate for gay rights and an early opponent of the Iraq war in 2003.
Jackson Lee routinely won reelection to Congress with ease. The few times she faced a challenger, she never carried less than two-thirds of the vote. Jackson Lee considered leaving Congress in 2023 in a bid to become Houston’s first female Black mayor but was defeated in a runoff. She then easily won the Democratic nomination for her congressional seat.
During the mayoral campaign, Jackson Lee expressed regret and said “everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect” following the release of an unverified audio recording purported to be of the lawmaker berating staff members.
In 2019, Jackson Lee stepped down from her leadership positions on the House Judiciary Committee and Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Congressional Black Caucus, after a lawsuit by a former employee who said her sexual assault complaint was mishandled.
Vertuno writes for the Associated Press.
