Barbara Lee
Honorary Degree Recipient, 2025 Commencement Howard University
The Honorable Barbara Lee is the mayor-elect of Oakland, California. She is also the first Black woman to represent northern California in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress, where she served for nearly 40 years and chaired the Congressional Black Caucus; the Task Force on Poverty, Income Inequality, and Opportunity; and the Congressional Social Work Caucus, among other leadership posts.
Lee has spent a lifetime fighting for justice and opportunity, bringing unquestionable results to the people and communities she has represented. Her leadership has always been rooted in the needs of the community. She understands the people she has served because she has lived their struggles — from poverty and homelessness to lack of affordable child care and health care. While in Congress, Lee secured billions of dollars to improve Oakland’s neighborhoods, enhance the quality of life, and to fund police officers and firefighters, community safety programs, safer and greener streets, small businesses, and the expansion and greening of the Port of Oakland.
Lee’s decades-long career as a public servant and advocate, during which she has fought for civil rights and the needs of the community, can be traced back to her early school days, when she worked with the NAACP to integrate her high school’s cheerleading team. Her advocacy continued when she served as president of the Black Student Union at Mills College. During that time, she invited Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to the campus, who inspired Lee to register to vote for the first time. She went on to work on Chisholm’s historic presidential campaign and served as one of her delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 1972.
Lee’s career in Congress began as an intern and progressed to serve as chief of staff for U.S. Representative Ronald V. Dellums of California from 1975-1987. At the state level, she was elected to the California Assembly, where she served from 1991-1997, and then the California State Senate, where she served from 1997-1998. By special election, Lee was elected as a Democrat to the 150th Congress, filling a vacancy caused by the resignation of Dellums. She was reelected to 13 succeeding U.S. Congresses.
One of her key moments in Congress was casting the sole vote objecting to giving the president unlimited war powers after Sept. 11, 2001, demonstrating that she was not afraid to stand up for accountability and justice. Her unflinching courage and principled leadership showcased her tenacity in tackling the toughest challenges and putting people first.
Born in El Paso, Texas, Lee moved with her family to California, where she graduated from San Fernando High School. While a single mother of two children, she earned a B.A. from Mills College in Oakland and a master’s degree in social work from the University of California, Berkeley.
Lee is recipient of the 43rd Thomas Merton Award and the Courage of Conscience Award presented by the Peace Abbey in Boston and in 2002 was recognized as a Woman of Peace at the Global Exchange Human Rights Awards in San Francisco. She appeared in the documentary film “Food Stamped” and contributed to Enitan Bereola II's bestselling book “Gentlewoman: Etiquette for a Lady, from a Gentleman.” She is an honorary member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority.