Barbara Mikulski facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Barbara Mikulski
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Official portrait, 2011
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| United States Senator from Maryland |
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| In office January 3, 1987 – January 3, 2017 |
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| Preceded by | Charles Mathias | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Chris Van Hollen | ||||||||||||
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| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland's 3rd district |
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| In office January 3, 1977 – January 3, 1987 |
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| Preceded by | Paul Sarbanes | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Ben Cardin | ||||||||||||
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| Born |
Barbara Ann Mikulski
July 20, 1936 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
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| Political party | Democratic | ||||||||||||
| Education | Mount Saint Agnes College (BA) University of Maryland, Baltimore (MSW) |
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Barbara Ann Mikulski (born July 20, 1936) is an American politician and social worker. She served as a United States senator for the state of Maryland from 1987 to 2017. As a member of the Democratic Party, she also served in the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987.
Mikulski holds two important records. She is the longest-serving woman in the history of the U.S. Congress and the longest-serving senator from Maryland.
Before becoming a politician, Mikulski was a social worker and a community organizer. This means she helped people in her community solve problems. She was first elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1971. In 2017, after retiring from the Senate, she became a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University.
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Early Life and Education
Barbara Mikulski was born and grew up in the Highlandtown neighborhood of East Baltimore. She was the oldest of three daughters. Her parents were of Polish heritage, and her family owned a grocery store in the city. While in high school, she helped her parents by delivering groceries to elderly neighbors.
She went to Mount Saint Agnes College and graduated in 1958. Later, she earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland School of Social Work in 1965.
Career as a Social Worker
After college, Mikulski worked as a social worker for Catholic charities and Baltimore's Department of Social Services. She helped children who were in danger and taught senior citizens about the Medicare health program.
Mikulski became a community activist when she learned about a plan to build a major highway through the Fells Point and Canton neighborhoods of Baltimore. She believed the highway would destroy historic parts of the city and hurt the community.
She organized people from different neighborhoods to fight the plan. Together, they successfully stopped the highway from being built. This experience showed her the power of communities working together.
Start in Politics
Mikulski's work as an activist made her well-known. In 1970, she gave a famous speech where she talked about how many working-class families felt ignored by the government. She said these families worked hard, paid their taxes, and served their country, but didn't get much in return.
Her powerful message helped her win a seat on the Baltimore City Council in 1971. This was the beginning of her long career in politics.
In 1976, Mikulski was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where she served for ten years.
Serving in the U.S. Senate
Senate Elections
In 1986, Mikulski decided to run for the U.S. Senate. She won the election and became the first woman from Maryland ever elected to the Senate.
Her opponent in the 1986 election ran a campaign that attacked Mikulski personally. However, Mikulski focused on talking about the issues that mattered to the people of Maryland. She won the election with 61% of the vote.
Mikulski was very popular and was re-elected four more times in 1992, 1998, 2004, and 2010, always by a large number of votes. On March 2, 2015, she announced she would not run for re-election in 2016 and would retire from the Senate.
Important Work in the Senate
From 2012 to 2015, Mikulski was the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. This committee decides how the U.S. government spends its money. She was the first woman and the first person from Maryland to ever have this important job.
She also worked on laws to help families. For example, she introduced the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act. This law helps low-income parents pay for safe child care. She also introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill aimed at making sure men and women are paid equally for the same work.
Changing the Rules
For a long time, women were not allowed to wear pants on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In 1993, Senator Mikulski and Senator Carol Moseley Braun decided to challenge this rule. They both wore pants to work one day.
Their bold move led to the rule being changed. Soon after, female senators and staff members were officially allowed to wear pants in the Senate.
Honors and Awards
Barbara Mikulski has received many awards for her public service.
- In 2011, she was added to the National Women's Hall of Fame.
- The space telescope science center in Baltimore named one of the world's largest astronomy databases after her. It is called the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.
- In 2012, NASA named a newly discovered exploding star "Supernova Mikulski" in her honor.
- In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest honor a civilian can receive in the United States.
- In 2022, a room in the United States Capitol building was named the Barbara Mikulski room in her honor.
Personal Life
Barbara Mikulski never married and has no children. She is known for her sense of humor and her short height of 4 feet 11 inches (150 cm). She often joked, "I may be short, but I won't be overlooked."
See also
In Spanish: Barbara Mikulski para niños
- Women in the United States House of Representatives
- Women in the United States Senate
Images for kids
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Mikulski speaking to a patient at a military hospital, 1980.
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Mikulski at a press conference.
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Senator Mikulski with Senator Kit Bond and actor David Hyde Pierce promoting awareness of Alzheimer's disease.
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