In Memoriam - Rep. Julia Carson

Indiana residents and liberals nationwide have lost a true champion with the death of U.S. Rep. Julia Carson. The New York Times reports:

Representative Julia Carson, the first black person and first woman to represent Indianapolis in Congress, died Saturday, a family spokeswoman said. She was 69.

Ms. Carson died after a battle with lung cancer, said the spokeswoman, Vanessa Summer.

Ms. Carson announced last month that she had terminal lung cancer and that she would not run for a seventh term next year. She had not been in Washington since September, when she was hospitalized with a leg infection.

She had said that she expected to return to Washington after recuperating, but a doctor found that her lung cancer, which had been in remission, had returned.

Ms. Carson was first elected to Congress in 1996. She championed children’s issues, women’s rights and efforts to reduce homelessness, and she was a staunch opponent of the Iraq war.

Ms. Carson was born to a single mother who worked as a housekeeper. She graduated in 1955 from the same segregated high school as the basketball star
Oscar Robertson.

She began her political career in the 1960s when Representative Andy Jacobs Jr. hired her to work in his office. Mr. Jacobs encouraged Ms. Carson to run for the Indiana Legislature in 1972, her first victory of more than two dozen in local, legislative and Congressional elections. Ms. Carson ran for Congress in 1996 after Mr. Jacobs retired.

For more on Representative Julia Carson's life, and her rise from poverty to a seat in the United States House of Representatives.