After serving in the California State Assembly, Maxine Waters (born 1938) was elected by Californians to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990. As a member of Congress she fought for legislation promoting aid to poor and minority neighborhoods in American cities and combating apartheid in South Africa.

"If you believe in something, you must be prepared to fight. To argue. To persuade. To introduce legislation again and again and again," stated Maxine Waters in Essence. During the fourteen years that she served in the California State Assembly, Waters earned a reputation as a both a fighter and the most powerful black woman in politics. In 1984 M. Carl Holman, head of the National Urban League, was quoted in Ebony as saying that Waters was "one of the brightest, ablest and most effective legislators without regard to race or sex that I've ever seen." After her 1990 election to the U...