History on the Hill: Madame Senator
The 1992 election of Carol Moseley Braun brought three more firsts: the first female African-American senator, the first female senator from Illinois, and the first black to be elected senator as a Democrat. "That last part is what surprises people the most," the former senator says, laughing, in a telephone conversation from Chicago, where she recently launched Ambassador Organics, a line of organic foods named in honor of her appointment, from 1999 to 2001, as ambassador to New Zealand, Samoa, and the Cook Islands.
Braun's resilience and charm remain, even after her unsuccessful run for the presidential nomination in 2004 and the mudslinging that characterized her close but losing battle for re-election in 1998. "If you look at the number of African-Americans, and the number of women, who have run for the Senate since 1992, versus before then," Braun says, you'll see "I raised the possibility that you could win, and [I believe] that is a great contribution."
Indeed, "as a black woman, Braun came with double jeopardy," says Jean Baker, professor of history at Goucher College and author of Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists. "And if you are in a dispossessed group, which both women and blacks are, then you tend to get fewer people in the pipeline, which in turn leads to a continuing and perpetual disadvantage."
Braun, born in 1947, grew up on Chicago's South Side, went to law school, and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney until winning a seat in Illinois's state legislature, where she served from 1978 to 1987, then becoming the Cook County recorder of deeds in 1988. Four years later, she announced her bid for the U.S. Senate. The Democratic primary pitted her against two-term incumbent Alan Dixon, and, surprising the pundits with her strong grass-roots support from women and whites as well as blacks, she won both the primary and the general election.
Once in the Senate, she became a member of the powerful Finance Committee, raising issues of pension equality for older women and emphasizing education. She also went up against North Carolina's Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, as she argued—successfully—that the Confederate flag embedded in the patented insignia of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was offensive.
But her successes were soon overshadowed by questions about her personal finances, her election finances, and alleged improprieties by her staff. The lingering result of those controversies— Braun was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing—is that Braun is not given sufficient credit for her accomplishments, says Reavis Mitchell, professor and chair of Fisk University's history department. "Braun was a good coalition builder. She attracted voters across race and gender and ethnic lines," he says. Unfortunately, Mitchell adds, "she did not turn out to be as much of a change agent as voters had envisioned." In 1998, like so many other Democrats, she was voted out of office.
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