In 1996, Juanita Millender-McDonald of California won a
seat in the U.S. House of Representatives just six years after
capturing her first elected office at the local level. From her
position on the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee, Millender-McDonald shaped highway projects
and federal programs that directly affected her Los Angeles
district. In 2007, she made history by becoming one of the
first African-American women to chair a standing committee
in Congress, the House Administration Committee.
Juanita Millender-McDonald was born Juanita Millender
on September 7, 1938, in Birmingham, Alabama, one of
five children raised by Shelly and Everlina Millender. After
her mother Everlina died, Shelly Millender, a minister,
moved his family to California. Juanita Millender married
James McDonald Jr. on July 26, 1955, and by the time
she was 26, the couple had five children. A homemaker
for 15 years, Millender-McDonald returned to college and
earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from
California’s University of Redlands in 1981. Millender-McDonald earned a master’s degree in educational
administration from California State University in Los
Angeles in 1988. After teaching math and English in a
public high school, she worked as an administrator in the
Los Angeles school district—eventually directing its gender
equality programs.1
Millender-McDonald first entered politics at the local level
in Los Angeles and served as a delegate to the Democratic
National Conventions in 1984, 1988, and 1992. In 1982, she
worked on behalf of the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign
of longtime Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley. Afterward
she worked on several local campaigns before entering and
winning election for a seat on the Carson city council in
1990. She excelled at building networks of political support
during the race. The first time she asked for the backing
of Representative Mervyn M. Dymally of California, he
declined, telling Millender-McDonald, “Local politics is too
divisive.” But she persisted. Dymally said, “She came back,
this time with a delegation of friends and supporters. I said,
‘What do you want?’ She said, ‘I need your endorsement.’
I said, ‘You have it.’” Millender-McDonald became the first
African-American woman elected to the council and in 1991
served as mayor pro tempore.2
In 1992, following the reapportionment of California
state assembly districts, Millender-McDonald prevailed in the
Democratic primary for a seat in the state legislature against
two incumbent assemblymen whose Los Angeles-area districts
had been merged. She went on to serve in the California state
assembly until 1996. Within her first year in the assembly, she
chaired two panels: the insurance committee and the revenue
and taxation committee. Millender-McDonald sponsored a
major transportation bill to create the Alameda Corridor, a
national transportation artery designed to improve railroad
and highway access to the San Pedro Bay Ports, which
constitute one of the nation’s largest shipping complexes.3
In December 1995, Millender-McDonald announced
her candidacy to fill a U.S. House seat left vacant by the
resignation of Representative Walter R. Tucker III. Tucker’s
congressional district—which encompassed suburbs south
of Los Angeles, including Carson and Compton—was
predominantly Democratic and working-class. African
Americans and Hispanic Americans composed roughly 75
percent of the population. Although no GOP challenger
entered the March 26, 1996, special election to fill the
remainder of the 104th Congress (1995–1997), Millender-
McDonald faced eight other candidates, including fellow
state lawmaker Willard H. Murray, and Robin Tucker, the
wife of Walter Tucker. With support from former longtime
speaker of the state assembly and San Francisco Mayor
Willie Brown, Millender-McDonald won with 27 percent
of the vote; her nearest competitor, Murray, received 20
percent. The Democratic primary for the full term in the
105th Congress (1997–1999) was held on the same day,
and Millender-McDonald prevailed over Murray by an even
narrower margin: 24 to 21 percent. In the fall 1996 general
election for the 105th Congress, she defeated Republican
Michael E. Voetee with 85 percent of the vote. Millender-McDonald won her subsequent five re-elections with
majorities of at least 75 percent.4
After she was sworn into the House on April 16,
1996, Millender-McDonald served on the Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee and the Small Business
Committee. She kept both assignments throughout her
congressional tenure. In the 106th Congress (1999–2001),
she was appointed ranking member of the Small Business
Subcommittee on Empowerment. Democratic leaders also
named her a regional whip, and in the 107th Congress
(2001–2003) she co-chaired the Democratic Caucus for
Women’s Issues. In the 108th Congress (2003–2005) she
drew assignments on the House Administration Committee
and the Joint Printing Committee, and she served as
ranking member of the Small Business Subcommittee
on Tax, Finance, and Exports.5
In the 109th Congress (2005–2007), Democratic Leader
Nancy Pelosi of California appointed Millender-McDonald
ranking member of the House Administration Committee.
After Democrats regained control of the House in the
2006 elections, Millender-McDonald was named chair,
joining the new head of the Ethics Committee, Stephanie
Tubbs Jones of Ohio, as the first African-American women
to chair standing committees of the House. Millender-
McDonald was also vice chair of the Joint Committee on
the Library, whose membership roster was drawn from the
House Administration Committee and the Senate Rules
and Administration Committee.6
Many of Millender-McDonald’s legislative initiatives
came from her seat on the Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee. In 2001, she authored the Terrorism Threat
to Public Transportation Assessment Act to evaluate
vulnerabilities in the nation’s mass transit systems. She
also was a lead sponsor of the Nuclear Waste Responsible
Component and Protection Act, which sought to ensure
that hazardous chemical material was transported and
stored safely and environmentally outside of inner cities.
The committee’s jurisdiction also allowed Millender-
McDonald to attend to transportation projects directly
affecting her district. During her first months in the House,
Millender-McDonald secured $400 million in federal loan
guarantees necessary to complete her longtime work on the
Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile railroad artery that connects
the national rail system to the ports of Los Angeles and
Long Beach. In the 108th Congress, Millender-McDonald
helped draft the six-year Transportation Equity Act—which
brought in more than $87 million in federal money for
highway projects in and around her district. Her addition to
the bill, the Projects of National and Regional Significance
program, allocated more than $6.6 billion toward major
transportation projects nationally.7
In the House, Millender-McDonald continued to work
on issues she first addressed in the California assembly: the
Los Angeles public school system, job training, childcare,
education, women’s issues, and combating addiction.
Millender-McDonald also worked to promote awareness
of national health issues like cervical cancer, AIDS, asthma,
and bone marrow registration. She introduced concurrent
resolutions in the 106th and 107th Congress urging frequent
testing and stressing the severity of cervical cancer. Millender-McDonald submitted the Asthma Awareness, Education, and
Treatment Act four times between 1999 and 2005, hoping
to expand research, unify federal efforts to treat asthma,
and incentivize climate and pest control businesses to assist
with improving air quality in low-income and multi-family
housing units.8
Millender-McDonald introduced the Freedmen’s Bureau
Records Preservation Act of 2000, which authorized funds
and directed the National Archives to update and index
the department’s records and place them on microfilm to
improve access. On the House Floor, Millender-McDonald
spoke “as a descendant of slaves” to urge passage of the
bill, which she called a significant genealogical resource
for Black Americans. “African-Americans, like many other
Americans, look to official records for their ancestors.
As ship manifests are the vital link between European-
Americans and their European ancestors, the Freedmen’s
Bureau records are the link for African-Americans to their
slave and African ancestors.” The bill passed both chambers
without objection.9
Although she avoided the limelight, Millender-McDonald
occasionally orchestrated dramatic political moments. In
November 1996, shortly after taking office, she brought
CIA director John Deutsch to a Watts town hall meeting,
where Deutsch fielded questions about allegations that the
CIA funneled proceeds from the sale of illegal drugs to
purchase arms for the Nicaraguan Contras. Three years later,
seeking to boost the stalled ambassadorial appointment
to New Zealand of former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley
Braun of Illinois, Millender-McDonald staged a sit-in at
the office of Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who
was blocking the appointment. As ranking member of the
House Administration Committee, she called for an election
reform field hearing to collect testimony in Columbus,
Ohio, regarding allegations of voting restrictions and poorly
administered polling places in the state during the 2004
general election.10
In mid-April 2007, Millender-McDonald took a six-week
leave of absence from her House duties to receive treatment
for cancer. She passed away at her home in Compton
on April 21. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remembered
Millender-McDonald as “a trailblazer, always advocating
for the full participation of all Americans in the success
and prosperity of our country.”11
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