Former Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, died at the age of 88, her family announced Sunday.
Colleagues and friends celebrated her legacy as a woman of many firsts — the first Black head psychiatric nurse at the Dallas VA hospital, the first nurse elected to Congress, and the first African American and first woman to chair the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Johnson was a “quiet storm,” according to her successor in Congress, Rep. Jasmine Crockett. She was a “trailblazer,” according to the man who currently holds the Congressional Black Caucus chair she once did, Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev. And to President Joe Biden, she was “an icon and a mentor to generations of public servants.”
