Lee, Barbara Jean

Impact on the world

On September 14, 2001, just three days after the September 11 attacks, became the only member of either chamber of Congress to vote against the broad war authorization that passed the House 420-1 and the Senate 98-0, warning colleagues against using the moment to write what she called a 'blank check' for endless war; the authorization was later invoked to justify military action 41 times across 18 countries over the following 18 years, a pattern Lee had specifically warned against.

Life & background

Born in El Paso, Texas, where a segregated hospital initially refused to assist her mother during a complicated delivery, Lee grew up facing repeated discrimination in the segregated South before her family relocated to California. As a freshman congresswoman in 2001, she cast the sole dissenting vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force three days after the September 11 attacks, telling colleagues, 'let us not become the evil that we deplore,' a stance for which she received death threats requiring round-the-clock security and was branded 'anti-American' by some media outlets at the time. She went on to introduce a 2002 amendment calling for diplomatic engagement over military action ahead of the Iraq War, which received only 72 votes, and has continued for over two decades to introduce legislation seeking to repeal or sunset the broad war authorizations passed after 9/11. She also became a leading congressional voice on HIV/AIDS policy and, as of recent years, the highest-ranking African American woman in Congress.

Sources

1. Democracy Now!; The Intercept; Women & the American Story (New-York Historical Society); WBUR On Point