US consultant Sheila Jackson Lee, a powerful progressive voice within the Democratic occasion who was outspoken on African American and girls’s rights, has died, her household posted on X late on Friday.
Jackson Lee, of Texas, introduced final month she had been identified with pancreatic most cancers and was present process remedy. She was 74, in response to US media.
“A fierce champion of the individuals, she was affectionately and easily generally known as ‘Congresswoman’ by her constituents in recognition of her near-ubiquitous presence and repair to their day by day lives for greater than 30 years,” her household mentioned within the assertion.
Jackson Lee, who represented elements of Houston, launched laws within the Home of Representatives to make “Juneteenth” a federal vacation commemorating the top of the authorized enslavement of Black People.
The vacation marks the day in 1865 when a Union common knowledgeable a bunch of enslaved individuals in Texas that that they had been made free two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in the course of the Civil Warfare.
Jackson Lee had been in Congress since 1995. In March, she staved off an intra-party problem from former congressional intern Amanda Edwards, capturing 60% of the votes forged within the district and setting the stage for her to run for re-election in November.
She additionally leaned on her tenure and recognition in her congressional district to run for mayor of Houston in December. However she misplaced to fellow Democrat and former state senator John Whitmire by a margin of 65% to about 35%.
Jackson Lee was certainly one of a handful of congressional Black Caucus members who have been arrested in Washington DC in the summertime of 2021 whereas protesting in opposition to delays in passing laws to guard voting rights.
She was demonstrating outdoors the Hart Senate workplace constructing alongside different protesters on the time of her arrest.
“Any motion that may be a peaceable motion of civil disobedience is worthy and extra – to push all of us to do higher,” Jackson Lee, whose state is without doubt one of the hardest locations to vote within the US, mentioned on the time.
Reuters contributed to this report
