Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas who was a leading voice for racial justice and progressive causes during the three decades she served in the House, died on Friday. She was 74.
Her death was announced in a statement by her family that did not list a cause. She said in June that she had pancreatic cancer.
“By God’s grace, I will be back at full strength soon,” she told constituents at the time.
Ms. Jackson Lee, a former member of the Houston City Council who was elected to Congress in 1994, was an irrepressible presence from the start, relentlessly lobbying senior members for speaking time and almost always getting her way.
To critics, she would say that she was just serving her constituents.
“You have an obligation to make sure that their concerns are heard, are answered,” she said in a 1999 interview with The New York Times. “I need to make a difference. I don’t have wealth to write a check. But maybe I can be a voice arguing consistently for change.”
During her congressional career, Ms. Jackson Lee served as chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee for Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, and as a senior member of the Judiciary, Homeland Security and Budget committees.
She was the author and lead sponsor of the legislation that in 2021 established Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, as the first new federal holiday in 38 years.
The Congressional Black Caucus called Ms. Jackson Lee “a fierce advocate for social and economic justice, national and homeland security, energy independence, and children and working families” in a statement released late Friday.
What turned out to be one of her final political races was last year, when she lost the Houston mayoral election to John Whitmire, a moderate Democrat and former state senator. Though she entered the race with strong backing from many Democrats and Black voters, Ms. Jackson Lee struggled to establish a message and expand her base of support.
She won the Democratic primary for her seat in Congress in March, standing for re-election for her 16th term in the House.
Sheila Jackson was born on Jan. 12, 1950, in Queens, N.Y., according to the Congressional Directory. Her father, Ezra Jackson, a son of immigrants from Jamaica, worked as a cartoonist who drew comics for Marvel in the 1940s, she said in an interview with The Houston Chronicle last year. Her mother, Ivalita Bennett Jackson, was a vocational nurse, according to her obituary by the Houston Chronicle in 2010.
Ms. Jackson Lee did not set out for a political career at first. When she and her brother were growing up in Queens, she planned to become an executive secretary.
But when she was a student at Jamaica High School, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, altering her goals. The event led to the creation of grants for Black students at New York University, one of which she received. It also filled her with a new fire, she said in the 1999 interview. If Dr. King had died trying to create opportunities for people like her, shouldn’t she reach as high as she could?
“I am a benefactor of the hills and valleys, the broken bodies and broken hearts, the loss of life of many who have gone on before me,” Ms. Jackson Lee said.
She transferred to Yale, where she graduated with a degree in political science in 1972, then earned a law degree in 1975 from the University of Virginia. Marriage led her to Houston, where her husband, Elwyn Cornelius Lee, who survives her, is a senior administrator at the University of Houston. She worked for 12 years as a lawyer there before becoming a judge in 1987.
She began her political career in 1990, when she joined Houston’s City Council. In 1994, she was elected to Congress, beginning a nearly 30-year tenure in the House of Representatives.
She said in interviews that her political ambition sprang in part from her wish to give women and Black and Hispanic people a fair shot at success.
By her mayoral race last year, many Houstonians were familiar with Ms. Jackson Lee. She had won endorsements from prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, who traveled to Houston to rally for the candidate, and local leaders, like the departing mayor, Sylvester Turner. Ms. Jackson Lee polled far better with Democrats than Mr. Whitmire before the vote.
Mr. Whitmire said in a statement that Ms. Jackson Lee was “a dedicated public servant and a champion for her constituents,” adding that he had worked with her recently at the Houston Office of Emergency Management to help Houstonians recover from a storm.
In addition to her husband, Ms. Jackson Lee is survived by their two children, Jason Cornelius Bennett and Erica Shelwyn, as well as grandchildren.
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