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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 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. That was Sheila,” 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.
A native of Queens, New York, 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 Houston City Council in 1989, then ran for Congress in 1994. She was an advocate for gay rights and an early opponent of the Iraq War in 2003.
Top congressional Democrats reacted quickly to the news Friday night, praising 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 than Jackson Lee, saying she “studied every bill and every amendment with exactitude and then told Texas and America exactly where she stood.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California cited Jackson Lee’s “relentless determination” in getting Juneteenth declared a national holiday.
