U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a 1975 graduate of the College of Virginia College of Regulation who championed efforts to advertise equality throughout her 30-year profession in Congress, died Friday from pancreatic most cancers. She was 74.

Jackson Lee, who was lively within the Black American Regulation College students Affiliation on the Regulation College, represented Texas’ Houston-based 18th District, a Democratic stronghold, since 1994, after serving on Houston’s Metropolis Council and as a municipal choose.

In Congress, she was a lead sponsor of laws making Juneteenth a federal vacation in 2021. The date commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and introduced that greater than 250,000 enslaved Black folks within the state had been free.

“I considered these slaves, who had been born, lived and died, and by no means had been honored, and by no means knew freedom,” Jackson Lee informed TV station KHOU at a Juneteenth prayer service in Houston in 2022.

President Joe Biden referred to as Jackson Lee “unrelenting” in her management.

“At all times fearless, she spoke reality to energy and represented the ability of the folks of her district in Houston with dignity and charm,” Biden stated in an announcement.

Go to the College of Regulation’s web site for extra about Jackson Lee, her time at UVA and her efforts on behalf of racial justice and fairness.