Longtime US Rep Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston has died

HOUSTON (AP) 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. In a statement, Jackson Lee’s family said she had been a beloved wife, sister, mother and grandmother known as Bebe.