An “unrelenting” Sheila Jackson Lee remembered by Kamala Harris, former colleagues

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HOUSTON — While serving in the U.S. Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris said she sometimes felt the urge to hide when she saw Sheila Jackson Lee, the “unrelenting” Houston congresswoman, heading her way in the halls of Congress.

“I knew whatever else may be on my mind, Sheila Jackson Lee would require a very serious and specific conversation with you about what she had on her mind, and then she would tell you exactly what she needed you to do to help her get it done,” said Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on Thursday in a eulogy for Jackson Lee.

Before she died July 19 at age 74, amid a battle with pancreatic cancer, Jackson Lee “never lost an opportunity to fight for the people she served,” Harris said. That was the resounding theme of some two dozen speeches, delivered by a host of civic and political leaders and Jackson Lee’s friends and family, at a more than four-hour funeral at Fallbrook Church in North Houston.

More than 50 of Jackson Lee’s former colleagues in Congress, along with a star-studded lineup of national and local elected officials, packed the church sanctuary to celebrate her life. She was described as a progressive titan who pushed for now-indelible liberal causes years ahead of public opinion, and a relentless fighter who used every tool at her disposal to improve the lives of her constituents.

The remarks were peppered with anecdotes of Jackson Lee’s late-night calls and arm-twisting in pursuit of legislative wins, and examples of the causes she pursued most vigorously, from immigrants’ rights to cracking down on police violence. But the speeches also were infused with talk of the nation’s current political turmoil, as many speakers told the audience that Jackson Lee would have wanted them to continue fighting for civil rights and progressive policies in her stead.

The Houston Democrat’s political career spanned 37 years, exactly half her life. Her nearly three-decade run in Congress was bookended by the presidencies of Bill Clinton — who attended Thursday’s service along with his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — and Joe Biden, whose vice president eulogized Jackson Lee as a “fierce champion for justice” and “one of the smartest and most strategic legislators in Washington, D.C.”

As she spoke, Harris was flanked to her immediate right by Hillary Clinton, who narrowly missed becoming the first female president eight years ago. Clinton, in her own speech a few hours earlier, said Jackson Lee died too soon, at a time when her voice was still needed.

“But come next January when our first woman president takes the oath of office, I’ll be thinking of Sheila,” Clinton said, drawing a standing ovation. “I’ll be thinking of her and [former congresswomen] Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan and all the generations of women who helped to make that day possible because they never stopped believing.”

Jackson Lee was a constant presence in her district, several speakers noted, alluding to the untold number of ceremonies and food drives she attended and her knack for finding her way in front of a microphone, whether at press conferences or on local TV.

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a longtime political ally who has voiced interest in running for Jackson Lee’s seat, said she insisted in her final months on helping distribute food and water at a shelter in the wake of a recent storm, even when her body had grown frail from cancer.

“Sheila wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Turner said. “But because she was an ambassador on a special assignment, there was one person she had to yield to. And God said to Sheila, ‘Sheila, your work on this earth is done. You ran a good race, you fought a good fight, and now it’s time, my sister, for you to come right on home.”

Like Turner, Jackson Lee’s career in public office began in the late 1980s. She spent three years as a Houston municipal judge, under a court system overseen by future congressional colleague Sylvia Garcia, and another five years as an at-large member of Houston City Council. She joined Congress in 1995 after ousting incumbent Craig Washington in the Democratic primary.

Jackson Lee went on to serve nearly 15 terms representing Texas’ 18th Congressional District, a seat known for electing some of the state’s most prominent Black lawmakers, including Jordan and Mickey Leland. She easily dispatched every political challenger who bothered to run against her, faltering only when she decided last year to run for Houston mayor. Her runoff loss to then-state Sen. John Whitmire was her first political defeat since she made three unsuccessful runs for countywide judgeships in the 1980s.

At the time of her death, she had served in Congress longer than all but 18 other current members of the 435-seat House. She and Austin Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett were the longest-serving Texans in Congress at the time of her death. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the few to outrank Jackson Lee on tenure, attended Thursday’s service.

Nearly every speaker mentioned Jackson Lee’s tenacity and the no-nonsense style she often employed, skipping the small talk to push for some policy or federal funding for Houston.

Bill Clinton said that during his presidency, his team maintained what they called a “just say yes” list, featuring a small group of lawmakers that included Pelosi and then-Sen. Ted Kennedy.

“The ‘just say yes’ list meant this: whatever it is they want, sooner or later, you’re gonna do it. So, you might as well save the taxpayers the time and money of hassling ‘em over it,” Clinton said. Jackson Lee, he said, quickly became “the only freshman on the list.”

Jackson Lee was routinely ranked among the most effective members of Congress by the Center for Effective Lawmaking at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University.

In 2021, she worked with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, as the House’s lead author on a bill establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, marking the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in Galveston were told they were free.

She helped lead an effort to renew the Violence Against Women Act, a landmark measure aimed at better protecting women from domestic violence and sexual assault. The law had expired in 2019 and was revived under a bill signed in 2022 by Biden, who credited Jackson Lee during a bill signing ceremony, quipping, “I learned a long time ago, when Sheila wants something, just say yes. It saves a lot of time.”

Jackson Lee often was on the cutting edge of liberal and moral causes, such as her early opposition to the Patriot Act and the Iraq War “when the Washington consensus was pushing back the other way,” said U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the Washington Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She also was an early sponsor of a measure establishing a single-payer health care system “long before it entered the national consciousness,” Jayapal added.

Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, another longtime ally of Jackson Lee, said she was “in the pantheon of women, particularly Black women, that helped make this country what it is today.”

“If we don’t elect the first Black woman and South Asian to the White House, we will have disappointed Sheila Jackson Lee,” Ellis added, referring to Harris’ candidacy against Republican Donald Trump.

Thursday’s funeral was the last of several events this week marking Jackson Lee’s death. She lay in state Monday in the Houston City Hall rotunda, her casket visited by hundreds of mourners, including Biden. That was followed by a Tuesday ceremony at God's Grace Community Church, in Houston’s Acres Homes neighborhood, and a Wednesday service at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Third Ward, the predominantly Black neighborhood that was a core part of Jackson Lee’s district.

Harris’ appearance, meanwhile, was part of two-day swing through Houston that marked her third trip to Texas in the last month. In July, she delivered a speech in Dallas at the annual convention of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the historically Black sorority of which she and Jackson Lee were both members. Harris also visited Houston recently for a briefing on Hurricane Beryl recovery and to address the American Federation of Teachers’ national convention.

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