Longtime US 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, reports the AP. Lillie Conley, her chief of staff, confirmed that Jackson Lee, who had pancreatic cancer, died in Houston Friday night with her family around her. The Democrat had represented her Houston-based district and the nation's fourth-largest city 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. Bishop James Dixon, a longtime friend in Houston who visited Jackson Lee earlier this week, said he will remember her as a fighter.
"She was just a rare, rare jewel of a person who relentlessly gave everything she had to make sure others had what they needed," he said. 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 immediately 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."
Jackson Lee quickly established herself as fierce advocate for women and minorities, and a leader for House Democrats on many social justice issues, from policing reform to reparations for descendants of enslaved people. She led the first rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act in nearly a decade, which included protections for Native American, transgender, and immigrant women. Jackson Lee was also among the lead lawmakers behind the effort in 2021 to have Juneteenth recognized.
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Top congressional Democrats praised her commitment and work ethic. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina called her "a tenacious advocate for civil rights and a tireless fighter, improving the lives of her constituents." Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said he had never known a harder-working lawmaker, saying she "studied every bill and every amendment with exactitude and then told Texas and America exactly where she stood."
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