For Candidates Like Summer Lee Pennsylvania Didn’t Have A Pipeline — So She Helped Build One
When Summer Lee moved back home to the Pittsburgh area in 2015 after graduating from Howard University Law School, she did not plan to run for office.
Lee was an organizer. She supported Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential primary bid, then Hillary Clinton in the general election. The next year, when the high school Lee graduated from became engulfed in scandal after video surfaced showing school officials using stun guns and physical force on Black students, including some with special needs, she attended her first school board meeting.
“It was Black kids who were facing the worst outcomes, who were facing the worst and least amount of opportunities, who were being abused,” Lee recalled in a recent interview with The 19th. Most of the board members were White, and they we...