Synopsis
Born in 1936, Barbara Mikulski grew up in East Baltimore as the daughter of a grocer. She graduated from Mount St. Agnes College in 1958 and earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland in 1965. In 1976, she won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1986, Mikulski became the first female Democrat from Maryland to win election to the Senate. She is currently the longest-serving woman senator.
Early Life
For more than 30 years, Barbara Mikulski has served in the U.S. Congress, first as a representative and now as a senator. She broke the record for the longest-serving female senator in 2012, but she did not originally set out to become a politician. Growing up in East Baltimore, Mikulski first aspired to be a scientist after seeing a movie about French chemist and physicist Marie Curie.
Mikulski comes from a Polish, working-class neighborhood and inherited her can-do spirit and determination from her family. Both her grandfather and father were local shopkeepers. Her grandfather ran a bakery, and her father had a grocery store. Mikulski helped out with her father's store in addition to studying hard in school. She went an all-girls Catholic high school and then studied sociology at Mount St. Agnes College.
After completing her bachelor's degree in 1958, Mikulski then earned a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland. She put her education work for the people of Baltimore, beginning in 1965. Toward the end of the decade, Mikulski became a community organizer, waging war against a 16-lane highway to run through East Baltimore. She brought different segments of the racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood together to stop the highway project. Her coalition, known as Southeast Council Against the Road, or SCAR, won their battle with city hall.