Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives A. Halleck who became Republican House leader and Minority Leader from 1959 to 1965, Hale Boggs who died in a plane crash, and Dick Gephardt who became the Democrats' House leader but as Minority Leader since his party lost control in the 1994 midterm elections. Since 1995, the only Majority Leader to become Speaker is John Boehner, though indirectly as his party lost control in the 2006 midterms elections. He subsequently served as Republican House leader and Minority Leader from 2007 to 2011 and then was elected Speaker when the House reconvened in 2011. In 1998, with Speaker Newt Gingrich
Women in the United States House of Representatives Shirley Chisholm entered the U.S. House of Representatives in 1969 as the first African American woman in either chamber of Congress. U.S. Representative Yvonne Brathwaite Burke became the first member of the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate to give birth while in office and first person to be granted maternity leave by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1973, with the birth of her daughter Autumn. The gym of the U.S. House of Representatives (with the exception of its swimming pool) first opened to women in 1985, the gym having previously been male-only. The swimming