My mother, when she was about to deliver me in El Paso, Texas, needed a cesarean section and they wouldn’t admit her because she was black. It was a Catholic hospital. My grandmother, who was half Irish—because my great-grandmother, who was a domestic worker, had been raped by her white employer—looked white, so she had to convince the people in the admitting office that my mother was her daughter. They finally let her in and they left my mother on a gurney in the hall, unattended, and she was delirious. She needed a C-section. Finally a doctor noticed her, drove her into the operating room, and it was too late for a C-section. She almost died; they had to pull me out using forceps and I barely made it. She almost didn’t live and I almost didn’t get here. So you think I’m not mad? Please. I don’t like talking about this stuff a lot. But I guess anger has been just a part of my life since the day I was born. It’s part of what’s motivated me to deal with racism, sexism, lack of access to health care for women—for my whole life—that’s why I fight.

—Congresswoman Barbara Lee