Breaking a ‘cement’ ceiling: Summer Lee’s journey to becoming the state’s first Black congresswoman

Summer Lee’s swearing-in wasn’t the celebratory moment her family envisioned. Instead of watching Lee take the oath as the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress, her mother and grandmother were dozing off in the House gallery as a Republican standstill over electing a new speaker dragged into its eighth hour.

“I said to the man next to me, ‘This is taking a while, huh?’” said Lee’s mom, Shelda Lee. Later, she realized he was Paul Pelosi.

Unable to wait out the stalemate, Lee’s family drove back to Western Pennsylvania, and four days later, Lee took the oath in a quiet ceremony around 3 a.m.

But even if all had gone as planned, Lee said, she wouldn’t have felt like celebrating. Surviving a brutal election left her a little hardened, and the pressure of making sure she’s not the last Black woman to represent Pennsylvania has her focused.

“When you’re a Black woman, that ceiling’s not even glass. It’s cement. And you get scarred doing it,” Lee said in a recent interview. “And then you’re sworn in and you realize you’re here for an uncomfortable job, to do very uncomfortable things, to push ... a system that is so deeply entrenched ... that your role is to kind of just chip away at it.”

Lee, 35, has been challenging authority since she was a teenager arguing with a substitute teacher about Christopher Columbus’ role in history, recalled her mother, whose family has roots in the civil rights movement.

Her political career has been an ongoing battle against the status quo. She ran and won two statehouse primary elections without the support of the Democratic Party and then built a pipeline for other progressive candidates in Western Pennsylvania. She prevailed last year in a tough, competitive congressional primary on an unabashedly progressive platform over a more traditional candidate. With her win, the Pittsburgh-area 12th District went from being represented by a white male party stalwart who had been in the seat since 1994 to the most progressive Pennsylvanian to make it to Congress.

“I think Summer really is a case study in how progressives who’ve done the work and earned a reputation on a local level are best equipped to withstand dark-money last-minute attacks,” said Adam Green, cofounder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a national political action committee that ran ads for her. “In other districts, other people ... were easily defined by millions of dollars in attack ads. She had such a strong local reputation for being an effective progressive who is of the people.”

» READ MORE: What to know about U.S. Rep. Summer Lee

Now Lee joins a wave of lawmakers that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), who are gaining prominence in the tightly divided House. The 5-foot-2 Lee, who prefers hot chocolate to coffee and unwinds with General Hospital and Sunday family dinners, said she feels the pressure of her historic role but has no plans of keeping quiet in it.

Five years before winning her Pittsburgh-area congressional seat, Lee was a recent Howard Law graduate, staying at her mom’s house and trying to figure out what came next.

Politics wasn’t on her radar until a school board meeting for her old district drew her off the couch and into a room of frustrated parents. A video had surfaced showing school officials using a stun gun on Black students. Parents were frustrated, and Lee felt they were being largely ignored by the mostly white board.

She wound up delivering an impromptu speech that night and then organizing a write-in campaign to elect a local parent.

“I never sat down again,” Lee said.

Growing up in Braddock, Lee is described by her mom as “very, very vocal, defiant, and questioning of authority.”

Shelda Lee would frequently get calls from the school about her daughter, such as when she led her fellow ninth graders in a protest against the Pledge of Allegiance

She is proud of her daughter’s instinct to always fight for the little people, but she acknowledged she’s uncertain how her daughter will be received as a freshman member of Congress: “She’s young and she’s educated, and a lot of older people don’t really care that you’re young and educated. Right? They just see you as a smart-mouthed kid.”

But Lee has successfully built coalitions in long-shot political campaigns for the last five years. In 2018 she was one of three women backed by Democratic Socialists of America to defeat incumbents with an aggressive grassroots campaign focused on young and progressive voters, as well as winning over more moderate Black voters.

Lee thinks a lot of them were excited by her historic candidacy and her independence.

“People aren’t used to folks who come into politics and don’t need to kiss a ring and don’t go through the committee structure and the old boys’ club, but instead goes straight to the people,” Lee said. “The reality is that if we want to win, and if we’re going to win on those progressive policies, then we all have to do our politics differently.”

State Rep. Sara Inamorato, who ran alongside Lee in 2018, said the two tapped into a trust deficit between people and politicians. “When folks see regular people running who seem to be forging a path because they want to do good things for people, I think people gravitate toward that.”

Lee won a five-person primary for her Pittsburgh-based congressional seat, which was vacated by Democrat Mike Doyle. She beat out second-place Steve Irwin, who was endorsed by the local party. Then in the general election, she defeated a Republican, also named Mike Doyle, in a race that became closer than expected in the deep-blue district.

She was able to withstand an onslaught of attack ads from opponents and PACs because she had developed a following, political observers said. And while she didn’t run away from progressive stances like supporting “Medicare for All” and the “Green New Deal,” she focused her campaign on economic inequalities and fighting corporate greed.

Along the way, Lee anchored a movement of progressivism in Western Pennsylvania. She founded UNITE, a political action committee that assisted in electing a slate of eight progressive candidates to the Common Pleas Court and Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, Ed Gainey.

“She created this energy,” said former Braddock Mayor Chardae Jones, who considers Lee a political mentor. “I have friends that I know that are now like, ‘I want to run for this. I want to run for that.’”

Lee said part of that ongoing work is to increase representation beyond her election.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” Lee said. “This isn’t a one-cycle thing, and it’s not a one-person thing. ... None of this project works if it dies off.”

As her stalled swearing-in showed, Lee is entering a deeply divided Washington. But she’s also in good company.

“She enters Congress with a really strong class of other progressives who won seats in a year of record retirements,” Green of the PCCC said. “People will look back at the class of 2022 as a very large class of progressives with gravitas who had more power because they came in together and were emboldened.”

Her new role as a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee may also thrust her into the spotlight as Republicans launch investigations into President Joe Biden’s family. Lee said she expects to be vocal in that new position.

But she said she wants to build relationships even as she picks battles.

With divided government, it’s likely that any real bills that have a chance of passing will be compromises. Lee faced criticism on the campaign trail from opponents who depicted her as someone who would contribute to gridlock in D.C.

Inamorato described her friend as a “convener.”

“People have these preconceived notions about her that just aren’t true,” Inamorato said. “That she’s a radical, she doesn’t talk to people. I think people are surprised to know ... she will work behind the scenes to bring people together for a common cause she believes in.”

Lee thinks Democrats have to be careful with what they give up, though. Asked how she’d handle compromise bills that come before her, she hesitated to commit to that word without knowing what’s behind it.

“I wasn’t sent to be the same type of politician as always,” she said. “And compromise, for me, it’s really important to recognize what we’re talking about. What is a compromise between someone who is unhoused and someone who has four yachts?”

“I want to be a congresswoman who expands the realm of what’s possible,” she said, her voice rising in a small Squirrel Hill coffee shop where she spoke to a reporter. “Who makes people uncomfortable and challenges folks ... even sometimes our own. And I want to be one who is unapologetic in fighting for marginalized people every single day. I want to be uncompromising in that.”

A few moments later an older man came over and asked her if she could keep her voice down. Lee nodded and once he’d walked away said: “I doubt he’d have said that to [former Congressman} Mike Doyle.”

Then she took a breath and kept going.