Born: 7 September 1938, United States
Died: 21 April 2007
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Juanita Millender
The following is republished from the U.S. Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”