Lindy Boggs

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In 1940, Hale Boggs won a seat in the House of Representatives and the Boggs family relocated to Washington, D.C. Boggs lost his 1942 re-election bid, but subsequently returned to win a seat as the representative of Jefferson Parish in 1947 where he served until his death.

On October 16, 1972, Representative Hale Boggs' twin-engine Cessna plane disappeared over Alaska. Boggs was helping a colleague, Nicholas Begich, father of future U.S. Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, to campaign for reelection. The first bill that the House passed in 1973, House Resolution 1, officially recognized Hale Boggs' death and created the need for a special election. Lindy Boggs ran successfully as a Democrat for her husband's vacated seat in Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, in New Orleans.

Boggs was elected to a full term in 1974 with 82 percent of the vote and was re-elected seven times thereafter until she vacated her office in January 1991. In 1980, she faced her closest challenge from the Republican Rob Couhig, an attorney-businessman who raised some $200,000 for the race, a large amount at that time for a challenger in a difficult district. Lindy Boggs still prevailed, 45,091 votes (63.8 percent) to Couhig's 25,512 (36.2 percent). Another 4.8 percent of the ballots were cast for Democratic former State Representative Clyde F. Bel, Jr., of New Orleans. Otherwise, Boggs polled more than 80 percent in her contested races. After her district was redrawn in 1984 in response to a federal court order mandating Louisiana's first majority-African-American district, she became the only white member of Congress representing a majority-African-American constituency. She announced her retirement from public office in 1990. She was succeeded by William J. Jefferson.

She was influential in composing the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. When the Banking committee marked up the ECOA, she added the provision banning discrimination due to sex or marital status without informing the other members of the committee beforehand, personally inserting the language on her own and photocopying new versions of the bill. She then told the other committee members, "Knowing the members composing this committee as well as I do, I'm sure it was just an oversight that we didn't have 'sex' or 'marital status' included. I've taken care of that, and I trust it meets with the committee's approval." The committee unanimously approved the bill.

Boggs was the first woman to preside over a national political convention, specifically the 1976 Democratic National Convention.

In 1991, she was awarded the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame, the oldest and most prestigious award for American Catholics.

In 1994, Boggs was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, one year after her husband had been among the original thirteen inductees.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed her official U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, a position she held until 2001.

In 2005, Boggs's home on Bourbon Street in New Orleans' French Quarter sustained moderate wind damage from Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, she was awarded the Congressional Distinguished Service Award for her time in the House of Representatives.

Boggs was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho, one of the four traditionally African-American sororities in the United States.

The Boggs Center for Energy and Biotechnology Building at Tulane is named in her honor.

Boggs and her daughter, Cokie Roberts, received the Foremother Award from the National Center for Health Research in 2013.

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