Pa. officials mourn the death of former State Sen. Shirley Kitchen, who represented North Philly for 20 years

Pennsylvania elected officials are mourning the death of former State Sen. Shirley Kitchen, the second Black woman to serve in the state Senate and a champion for progressive issues who represented parts of North Philadelphia for more than two decades. She died on Saturday at 79. A cause of death was not immediately clear.

Kitchen represented the 3rd Senatorial District, composed of parts of North Philadelphia, for 20 years. She is remembered by her former colleagues as a pillar and matriarch to her community who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of low-income people, even after she retired.

“She did so many things for so many people. Now that I’m old enough to appreciate it, I’m not quite sure how she did it — and she did it with such force,” said State Sen. Anthony H. Williams (D., Philadelphia), who served alongside Kitchen in the Senate and has known her for decades. Kitchen was elected to the state Senate in 1996 and served five terms before retiring in 2016.

Her former colleagues, some through tears, credited many of Pennsylvania’s recent criminal justice reforms as being born under Kitchen’s leadership, with her early legislative proposals paving the way for their passage years later. For example, Kitchen authored early drafts of what is now known as the Clean Slate Act, which automatically seals some non-violent convictions after 10 years, hiding them from most employer and landlord background checks. She first introduced similar legislation in Harrisburg years earlier and it failed. In 2018, two years after Kitchen retired, the Clean Slate Act became law in Pennsylvania and was heralded as a first-in-the-nation model for criminal justice reform.

Elected officials across the city shared their condolences, remembering Kitchen as an advocate who cared deeply for her community.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker in a social media post on Sunday recalled Kitchen as “fighting for people who often had no one else to fight for them,” and as a trailblazer for Black women in politics.

“Shirley Kitchen cared about working people, and she cared about Philadelphia,” said Parker, the city’s first Black female mayor and a former state representative.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said in a statement that Kitchen “never forgot who she was fighting for,” dedicating her life to making peoples’ lives better.

State Rep. Joanna McClinton, Pennsylvania’s first Black female speaker of the House, wrote in a social media post that Kitchen was “a mentor and her service in the state House and Senate inspired me greatly.”

Williams added that Kitchen also sought to elevate other Black politicians, like himself, to elected office — and laid the groundwork for much of the city’s current political progressivism.

“The reality is that a lot of the infrastructure that helps them, Shirley had everything to do with it, and more,” Williams said, noting her advocacy and experience during the Civil Rights Movement. “I would hope the progressives in this generation would tip their hat to a generation that really created the progressive movement.”

State Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia) knew Kitchen since he was a child, and said she helped him see the power a Senate seat has in improving the lives of his neighbors. When she decided to retire, Kitchen encouraged Street, who was on her staff at the time, to run to fill the vacancy in the 3rd District following her fifth and final term in the state Senate.

Williams and Street recalled Kitchen as a fair but demanding mentor.

“If she told you to do something, you better do it,” Williams said, with a laugh.

For Street, Kitchen “didn’t limit her advice. She had opinions about everything in my life, including when my wife was right and I needed to listen to her.”

Street said he spoke with Kitchen on a weekly basis, and Williams said he remained in touch with her as recently as last month. She often had ideas or issues she wanted the senators to take up. Street spoke with her last week about an an upcoming Registered Community Organization meeting that she was leading about a new proposed development nearby, emblematic of her continued involvement in her community.

Prior to her election to the state Senate, Kitchen was involved in the National Welfare Rights Movement, which was a progressive advocacy group for the dignified treatment of women and children, largely led by Black women, during the 1960s and 1970s, Williams said.

Kitchen served as the minority chair of the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee, in which she often leaned on her social work experience to inform her legislative proposals.

A Democrat in a time where Republicans controlled the state legislature, she served her entire tenure in the minority party, but was still able to garner bipartisan support for some of her legislative proposals.

“This image of her being an urban Black woman from Philadelphia would limit her ability to get stuff done in the Senate just wasn’t true,” Williams added. “She could analyze people and figure out what way to approach them with exceptional skill.”

Born in 1946 in Augusta, Ga., Kitchen attended the School District of Philadelphia and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in human services from Antioch University, according to her Senate Library biography. She later went on to work for former Philadelphia Mayor John Street, Sharif Street’s father, before she was elected to the state House in a special election in 1987. After she lost reelection to the seat in 1989, Kitchen returned to Harrisburg a decade later after her election to represent the 3rd Senatorial District.

“She was a transformational figure that loved her community and understood that the purpose of those of us holding elected power is to be able to make a difference in the lives of the people we serve, in a way that they can feel and see,” Sharif Street added.

Funeral services will be announced in the coming days, he said.