WASHINGTON — Barbara Lee was in her early 20s, a single mother of two young boys, attending Mills College in Oakland, California. The future California congresswoman needed public assistance and food stamps. She couldn’t afford child care, so often her children would attend classes with her.
Lee had no time for politicians who did not look like her or talk about issues that were most important to a young Black mother trying to make a better future for her sons.
So when professors assigned field work on presidential campaigns in her government class, she initially said, “No.”
