Remembering Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas : NPR

Texas congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a leading voice for progressive causes in the House, died Friday in Houston.

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Longtime Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has died at the age of 74. Jackson Lee, who was running for a 16th term, announced in June that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had a reputation as a firebrand, a prominent voice on civil rights and progressive issues in Texas and across the country. Houston Public Media’s Andrew Schneider reports on Jackson Lee’s legacy.

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SHEILA JACKSON LEE: The tragic death of George Floyd has awakened the world and the nation to the gross injustice that too many African Americans face on a daily basis.

ANDREW SCHNEIDER, BYLINE: Sheila Jackson Lee was a force in American politics. Born in Queens, N.Y., she was appointed a municipal court judge in Houston in 1987. She won a place on Houston City Council two years later. Then in 1994, she defeated incumbent Congressman Craig Washington in the primary for a solidly Democratic seat – Texas’s 18th congressional district. She won the general election that November and held the seat for nearly 30 years.

AL GREEN: I’m proud to say that I knew her as a person whose life should be celebrated.

SCHNEIDER: Houston Congressman Al Green, who worked alongside Jackson Lee for nearly two decades, considered her both a neighbor and a friend.

GREEN: I think that she should be remembered as an advocate for her community, a spokesperson for those who were seeking justice and as a friend of those who sometimes found themselves friendless.

SCHNEIDER: Jackson Lee was a champion of the residents of Houston’s predominantly Black Third Ward, including the students and faculty of Texas Southern University. Michael Adams followed her career for years as a political science professor at TSU.

MICHAEL ADAMS: Texas, I think, has lost a giant defender of the Constitution and of civil rights and civil liberties. And Sheila Jackson Lee will leave an indelible stamp on the legacy of American politics in general.

SCHNEIDER: Jackson Lee spent many of her years in Congress as a member of the minority party, which Adams says affected her ability to get legislation passed. But as Congressman Al Green says, that never stopped her from fighting for what she believed was right.

GREEN: In Congress, on major legislation, she was a sponsor or a co-sponsor. Examples would be the George Floyd Justice in Policing legislation promoted after George Floyd’s demise. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, she supported and pushed that.

SCHNEIDER: Jackson Lee counted plenty of triumphs. She was instrumental in establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, and she was a key figure in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

LIZZIE FLETCHER: It was her passion. It was something that she was so committed to and really drove home how important it was for us to get that done in Congress and was really a driving force behind that.

SCHNEIDER: Houston area Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher says Jackson Lee first spoke with her about getting involved in the Violence Against Women Act when Fletcher was first running for Congress in 2017.

FLETCHER: She worked tirelessly to protect people across our communities, including and especially women and girls. And so her work on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act was critically important and part of a whole series of work that she did to advance the cause of equality and justice.

SCHNEIDER: And to make sure people were safe. That included years on the House judiciary and homeland security committees, and it meant working tirelessly when Houston faced natural disasters, from Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 to Hurricane Beryl last week.

FLETCHER: She would say, we need to be doing this right now. You know, we need to be asking for disaster supplemental. We need to be moving this forward here. And she had been – she had that experience, and so she knew the questions to ask.

SCHNEIDER: In June, Jackson Lee announced her cancer diagnosis to the world. At the time of her death, she was one of the two longest serving members of the Texas congressional delegation. She’s survived by her husband of more than 50 years, Dr. Elwyn Lee, an administrator at the University of Houston, and her children, Erica and Jason. For NPR News, I’m Andrew Schneider in Houston.

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