Barbara Mikulski (1936-) is the first female U.S. Senator, a Democrat, elected in her own right, serving from from 1986-2017. As the first female chair of the key Senate Appropriations Committee (2012-2015), she is a major progressive force in that body.
Raised in a Baltimore Polish American working class neighborhood, Mikulski becomes a dynamic social worker and community organizer. Two events get her national attention. In 1968, after the Baltimore Mayor and City Council approve a plan for an I-95 highway extension into the City, Mikulski leads a successful community grassroots effort to prevent the highway from destroying working class neighborhoods. In 1970 she addresses a conference on the “ethnic movement”. She protests that the American working class with ethnic roots loves America but is frequently stereotyped as “racists and dullards”. They don’t live in a “melting pot” but are treated as outsiders.
She is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 and after her retirement from the U.S. Senate in 2017, she becomes the longest-serving female member of Congress with a host of achievements.
