Longtime U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who suffered from pancreatic cancer, has died

Longtime U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who led federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence and to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday, has died. She was 74.

Her chief of staff, Lillie Conley, confirmed on Friday evening that Jackson Lee, who had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, had died.

The Democrat had represented her constituency in Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city, since 1995. She had previously suffered from breast cancer and announced her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer on June 2.

“The road ahead will not be easy, but I trust that God will give me strength,” Jackson Lee said in a statement at the time.

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, and was immediately appointed to the important 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 felt it was an honor because they assumed I would be the person they needed.”

Jackson Lee quickly established herself as a passionate advocate for women’s and minority rights and a leading Democrat in the House on many social justice issues, from police reform to reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. She spearheaded the first revision 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 leaders who supported the 2021 effort to recognize Juneteenth as the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established in 1986. The holiday commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved African Americans finally learned their freedom in Galveston, Texas.

Jackson Lee is a native of Queens, New York. She graduated from Yale and received her law degree from the University of Virginia. She served as a judge in Houston before being elected to the Houston City Council in 1989. She then ran for Congress in 1994. She supported gay rights and was one of the first opponents of the Iraq War in 2003.

Jackson Lee won re-election to Congress easily. On the few occasions she had a challenger, she never received less than two-thirds of the vote. Jackson Lee considered leaving Congress in 2023 to become Houston’s first black mayor, but was defeated in a runoff. She then easily won the Democratic nomination for the 2024 general election.

During his campaign, Jackson Lee expressed regret, saying “every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect” after an unverified audio recording was released in which the congressman allegedly berated staff members.

In 2019, Jackson Lee resigned from two leadership positions on the House Judiciary Committee and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Congressional Black Caucus, after a former staffer complained that her sexual assault complaint had been mishandled.

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