Black women in American politics

Sojourner Truth (c. 1870)

Though women obtained the right to vote in the United States in 1920, many women of color still ran into obstacles. Some faced tests that required them to interpret the Constitution in order to vote.[2] Others were threatened with physical violence, false charges, and other extreme danger to prevent voting.[3] Due to these tactics and others that marginalized people of color, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was put into place by President Johnson. It outlawed any discriminatory acts to prevent people from voting.

Despite some of the elements of the Black Power movement included views centered on misogyny,[4] women quickly found a voice in the movement. Black women held leadership positions, ran community-based programs, and fought misogyny.[4] Others also contributed to the grass-roots movement through community service.[5] "In the age of rights, antipoverty, and power campaigns, Black women in community-based and often women-centered organizations, like their female counterparts in nationally known organizations, harnessed and engendered Black Power through their speech and iconography as participants of tenant councils, welfare rights groups, and a Black female religious order."[6]

Stacey Abrams with Nancy Pelosi.

One critical factor of the 2020 United States presidential election win was the efforts of Black women and other people of color who helped to energize and register voters across the United States. Stacey Abrams, former Representative of Georgia (2007 to 2017) and minority leader (2011 to 2017), founded both Fair Fight Action and New Georgia Project, organizations focused on addressing voter suppression and voter registration, and is often considered to be one of the key people to encourage voter outreach programs that affected the 2020 election in Georgia.[7] Abrams and other prominent women of color worked for several years registering voters and continued to register more than 800,000 new voters in the time leading up to the 2020 election.[8] While Georgia went to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, fueled by a mostly white, Republican electorate, Abrams and her cohorts chose to focus on persuading apathetic voters of color that their votes did matter rather than focusing on undecided white voters.[9] As a result of these efforts as well as changing ideology in white voters, Georgia went to Democrats during the 2020 election, the first time the state went blue since 1992.[10][11] Abrams was also the first Black woman to deliver a response to the State of the Union address.

Of the total 311 statewide elective executives, 6 are Black women. Of the over 20,000 elected county and local officials less than 8% are Black women with Stephanie Summerow Dumas elected in 2018 as the first Black woman county commissioner in the history of Ohio. April 3, 1973, Lelia Foley became the first Black woman elected mayor in the United States. In 1974, Oklahoma named Foley Outstanding Woman of the Year.[14]

Overall, 19 states, including the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia, have elected a Black woman to represent them in the U.S. House. There are currently 42 Black female representatives and three Black female delegates in the United States House of Representatives. Most are members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The first Black woman to serve as a representative was Shirley Chisholm from New York's 12th congressional district in 1969 during the Civil Rights Movement.[15]

Black women in the United States Senate are underrepresented twofold: the United States Senate has had ten Black elected or appointed office holders and only two Black female senators.[16] Despite this, Black women are increasingly running and being elected or appointed to offices.

Senator Kamala Harris of California

In 1993, Carol Moseley Braun became the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Senate, and the only female senator from Illinois. Braun's shock at Democratic incumbent senator Alan Dixon's vote to confirm Clarence Thomas after his 1991 sexual harassment scandal motivated her successful primary campaign against Dixon. Shortly after being elected, Braun took a one-woman stand against the United Daughters of the Confederacy's renewal of patent for the Confederate flag as their insignia.[17] Though Braun considered it a non-issue, she was still puzzled: "Who would have expected a design patent for the Confederate flag?"[18] Incredibly, Braun was able to sway the Senate vote against renewal of the patent. The United Daughters of the Confederacy no longer uses the confederate flag as their insignia. Kamala Harris began serving as the junior United States Senator from California in 2017. In 2004, she was elected the 27th District Attorney of San Francisco and served from 2004 to 2011. During that time, Harris created a unit to tackle environmental crimes[19] and a Hate Crimes Unit that focused on hate crimes committed against LGBT youth in schools.[20] In 2010, Harris won the election as California's Attorney General by less than 1 point and about 50,000 votes. She was then re-elected in 2014 by a wide margin.

Harris has a strong record of bipartisan cooperation with her Republican colleagues, having introduced a multitude of bills with Republican co-sponsors, including a bail reform bill with Senator Rand Paul,[21] an election security bill with Senator James Lankford,[22] and a workplace harassment bill with Senator Lisa Murkowski.[23] Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said of Harris: "She's hard-nosed. She's smart. She's tough."[24] Harris resigned her Senate seat on January 18, 2021, two days before her swearing-in as vice president of the Biden Administration.

Condoleezza Rice was the first in history to become the highest-ranking woman in the United States presidential line of succession during her tenure in the Bush administration.

The United States Cabinet has had five Black female officers. Patricia Roberts Harris was the first Black woman to serve in the Cabinet; she was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. Hazel R. O'Leary became the second Black woman to serve in the Cabinet during the Clinton administration as Secretary of Energy. Alexis Herman was the first Black woman to serve as the Secretary of Labor during the tenure of President Bill Clinton as well.

Condoleezza Rice was appointed Secretary of State in 2005 under the Bush administration, and thus became the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State as well as the first in history to be the highest-ranking woman in the United States presidential line of succession.[25] Rice also became the first woman to serve as the National Security Advisor.

Loretta Lynch served as the 83rd attorney general of the United States from 2015 to 2017 during the Obama Administration. Lynch succeeded Eric Holder and had previously served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York under both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. On November 8, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Lynch for the position of U.S. Attorney General, to succeed Eric Holder. Her nomination process was one of the longest in the history of the United States, taking 166 days after she was first nominated for the post.[26] She was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 26, 2015, and approved by the Senate in a 56–43 vote,[27] thereby becoming the first Black woman to hold this office.[28][29] She was sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden on April 27, 2015.[30]

Another Obama Administration appointee, Susan Rice, served as a foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis during the 1988 United States presidential election and in the Clinton administration in various capacities. Rice served as National Security Advisor to the in the Obama Administration from 2013 to 2017, and helped with U.S. efforts on the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Rice's name was also floated as a potential vice-presidential running mate to Biden in 2020; however, Senator Kamala Harris was officially announced as Biden's running mate in August 2020.[31]

Vice President Harris taking the oath for office on January 20, 2021.

On August 11, 2020, then-presumed Democratic party presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Harris as a running mate. On August 19, 2020 Harris became the third female U.S. vice presidential nominee of a major party, after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin. Harris became the running mate alongside former vice president Biden as Democratic nominee for the 2020 election.[32]

On November 7, 2020, CNN and other news outlets announced President Joe Biden's victory with Trump having no possible path to presidency based on electoral votes. The win made Kamala Harris the first Black woman and first Indian American to serve as vice president in the history of the United States.[33] Harris was sworn in on January 20, 2021.[34]

Shirley Chisholm ran for president of the United States in 1972.

Though Black women have run for presidential nomination in several campaigns, many have been labeled as "non-viable" due partly to their party affiliations, i.e., Charlene Mitchell in 1968 for the Communist Party USA, Lenora Fulani in 1988 for the New Alliance Party, and Cynthia McKinney in 2008 for the Green Party. Shirley Chisholm ran as both the "Black candidate" and the "woman candidate" in the 1972 presidential campaign and "found herself shunned by leaders from the political establishments she helped to found—the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women's Political Caucus."[35] Still, Chisholm was able to gain 151 votes at the Democratic National Convention, despite missing the presidential nomination.[35]

Although the office of the First Lady of the United States is not a political office, Michelle Obama, the first Black First Lady, has made an impact on women in the 21st century. Obama became first Lady of the United States in 2009, when her husband, Barack Obama, took office as President of the United States. Michelle Obama has donated her services to soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and other urban social services,[36] but she eventually found her niche in childhood obesity. Ms. Obama created Let's Move![37] in an effort to reduce childhood obesity around the nation.[38]

On January 21, 2019, Kamala Harris, junior United States Senator from California, officially announced her candidacy for President of the United States in the 2020 United States presidential election.[39] Over an estimated 20,000 people attended her formal campaign launch event in her hometown of Oakland, California.[40]

While Harris initially had high numbers over several of her opponents, she fell in the polls following the second presidential debate.[41][42] On December 3, 2019, Harris withdrew from seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, despite having been considered a potential front runner initially for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President.[43][44]

Before and after Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris was announced as 2020 Democratic nominee Biden's running mate, she became the subject of unsubstantiated claims regarding her eligibility to serve as both president and vice president.[48][49][50] The claim that Vice President-Elect Harris was not born in the United States, therefore not a natural citizen, was made by far-right conspiracy theorist, fraudster, and internet troll[62] Jacob Wohl on January 22, 2019 on Twitter.[63] Later that same day, his tweet was labeled false by PolitiFact.[64] Numerous fact-check articles evaluated the claim as false and stated that Harris was a natural-born citizen as required by the Constitution in order for her to serve.[65][66]

An opinion piece was published in Newsweek shortly after Biden's announcement titled, "Some Questions for Kamala Harris About Eligibility". The piece disputed the current common interpretation of birthright citizenship under the United States v. Wong Kim Ark and wrote that "under the 14th Amendment as originally understood", if Harris' parents were not citizens or permanent residents of the United States at the time of her birth, she could not be considered a citizen of the United States, and therefore would be ineligible to serve as vice president.[67] After receiving a strong backlash to the article, Newsweek added a preceding editor's note and published an opposing argument, authored by Eugene Volokh, a legal scholar at the UCLA School of Law.[68] Newsweek later replaced the editor's note with a formal apology, writing

This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize. We entirely failed to anticipate the ways in which the essay would be interpreted, distorted and weaponized. The op-ed was never intended to spark or to take part in the racist lie of Birtherism, the conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing Barack Obama, but we should have recognized the potential, even probability, that that could happen.[69][67]

Forty-Fifth President Donald Trump commented at the time, "I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements. I have no idea if that's right. I would have thought, I would have assumed, that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president."[70][71][72]

Similar accusations were made of 44th president Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign and throughout his presidency. There was extensive public questioning of Obama's religion, birthplace, and citizenship. This eventually came to be termed as the 'birther movement',[73] by which it was widely referred across media.[74][75][76][77][78][79][80] Even after the Obama campaign released his birth certificate, birther claims remained and followed Obama throughout and after his presidency.[81][82]

Goldie Taylor, a commentator for the news site The Grio, characterized the demand that Obama provide his birth certificate as an equivalent of making him "show his papers", as Black people were once required to do under Jim Crow laws.[83] Taylor also commented on the renewed birtherism targeted against Harris:

Today, black women are the dominant force—if not the deciding factor—in national Democratic politics. Our rise exposes and jeopardizes their white privilege—which one does not lose based on ideology. (...) Just as Barack Obama was and continues to be assailed by some of the left's most prominent voices, Harris will face more of the same. It appears virulent misogyny is not beneath them.[63]

Harris has also been attacked for her ethnic heritage.[84] Harris' father, Donald Harris, is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, while her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was an Indian American biomedical scientist, born in British India. While Vice President-Elect Harris has long identified as both Black and Indian, some people have criticized Harris for identifying as Black, conflating ethnicity and skin color. In an article published by Reuters, the matter was addressed through fact check on August 21, 2020:

Throughout her political career, the media has used many terms, including Black, South Asian, and African American, to describe Harris.[85]

Reuters also fact-checked rumors circulating on Facebook that an image of Harris's birth certificate identified her as "Caucasian", which was ruled as false by the news agency.[86]

The civil rights movement in the United States was a decades-long struggle by Black Americans to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the human rights of all Americans. During this time women had very few opportunities for leadership positions within the movement, leaving them to tend to informal leadership or supportive roles in the background.[102] Still, some women made an impact in the movement, such as Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Height, and Septima Clark.

Coretta Scott King in Manhattan Central Park just after the assassination of Dr. King.

Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., was an active advocate for racial equality, she was a leader for the Civil rights movement in the 1960s. King played a prominent role in the years after her husband's assassination in 1968 when she took on the leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the Women's Movement. Coretta Scott King founded the King Center and sought to make her husband's birthday a national holiday. She later broadened her scope to include both advocacy for LGBT rights and opposition to apartheid. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and was the first Black person to lie in repose the Georgia State Capitol.[103] King has been referred to as "First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement".[104]

Dorothy Height presents Eleanor Roosevelt the Mary McLeod Bethune Human Rights Award, 12 Nov 1960

Dorothy Height is credited as the first leader during the civil rights movement to recognize inequality for both Black people and women of any color concurrently and was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years.[105][106] Height started working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department, and at the age of 25, she began a career as a civil rights activist and joined the National Council of Negro Women. During the Civil Rights Movement, Height organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi,"[107] which brought together both Black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding. She fought for equal rights for both Black people and women of all races. Height was one of the only known women to partake in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[105] Upon working with Martin Luther King Jr., Height stated that King had once told her that Height was responsible for making The NAACP look acceptable during difficult times in the movement.[108] In his autobiography, civil rights leader James Farmer described Height as one of the "Big Six" of the Civil Rights Movement as behind the scenes and sharing the podium with Dr. King, but noted that her role was frequently ignored by the press due to sexism.[109] Height was also a founding member of the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership.

Septima Clark is most known for establishing "Citizenship Schools" that taught reading to adults throughout the Deep South.[110] These schools played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for Black people in the Civil Rights Movement and served as a means to empower Black communities.[111] Clark's goals for the schools were to provide self-pride, cultural-pride, literacy, and a sense of one's citizenship rights. Teaching reading literacy helped countless Black southerners push for the right to vote and developed future leaders across the country.[112] The citizenship schools were also seen as a form of support to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement.[110] Clark became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States,[113] and Martin Luther King, Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement".[114]

Since the 1960s, municipal governments have increasingly spent larger portions of their budgets on law enforcement than social and rehabilitation services. Ideas to reallocate funds from law enforcement to social services were not novel in the 1960s. In 1935, W. E. B. Dubois wrote about "abolition-democracy," in his book, Black Reconstruction in America.[115] Activists such as Angela Davis also advocated for the defunding or abolition of police departments throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.[116][117]

Tarana Burke at the 2018 Disobedience Awards.

In 2006, social activist and community organizer Tarana Burke began using the phrase "Me Too" on the Myspace social network. Burke's original intention of "Me Too" was to empower women through empathy and solidarity, especially the young and vulnerable, by visibly demonstrating how many women have survived sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.[118] It wasn't until October 2017 during the midst of widespread exposure of accusations of predatory behavior by Harvey Weinstein, that awareness rose after actress Alyssa Milano encouraged the use of the phrase as a hashtag.[119] Her intent was for social media to help reveal the extent of problems with sexual harassment and assault.[119] The day after Milano tweeted the hashtag, she wrote: "I was just made aware of an earlier #MeToo movement, and the origin story is equal parts heartbreaking and inspiring", crediting and linking to Burke.[118][120][121] Burke said she was inspired to use the phrase after her lack of response to a 13-year-old girl who confided to her that she had been sexually assaulted. She said she wishes she had simply told the girl: "Me too".[118]

A number of high-profile posts and responses from American celebrities soon followed, and the movement exposed several high-profile men of systematic sexual abuse, such as Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer. Another notable exposal included R. Kelly.

Patrisse Cullors

Black Lives Matter was co-founded by three Black community organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.[122][123] The movement began with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media platform Twitter after frustration over George Zimmerman's acquittal in the shooting of 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin in 2013.[124] Garza wrote a Facebook post titled, "A Love Note to Black People" in which she said: "Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter".[125] Cullors then created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to corroborate Garza's use of the phrase.[126] Tometi added her support, and Black Lives Matter was borne as an online campaign.[125] In particular, the movement was borne and Garza's post became popularized after protests emerged in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed Black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer.[127]

Cullors has acknowledged social media as responsible in exposing violence against Black Americans, saying: "On a daily basis, every moment, Black folks are being bombarded with images of our death ... It's literally saying, 'Black people, you might be next. You will be next, but in hindsight it will be better for our nation, the less of our kind, the more safe it will be."[128]

Garza does not think of the Black Lives Matter movement as something created by any one person. She feels her work is only a continuation of the continued historical resistance led by Black people in America.[129] The movement and Garza are credited for popularizing the use of the internet for mass mobilization between activists in different physical locations; a practice called "mediated mobilization," which has since been used by other movements such as the #MeToo movement.[130][131]

Women from within the Black Lives Matter movement, including Ohio State University professor and civil rights advocate Treva Lindsey, have argued that Black Lives Matter has sidelined Black women's experiences in favor of those of Black men. For example, more demonstrations have been organized to protest the killings of both Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin than the killings of either Kayla Moore or Rekia Boyd.[132] In response, #SayHerName is a movement founded in 2015 to focus specifically on the police-related killings of Black women and to bring their names into the Black Lives Matter protest. The stated goal is to offer a more complete, but not competing, narrative with the overall Black Lives Matter movement.[133][134] With the shooting of Breonna Taylor by police in her bed as she slept on March 13, 2020, #SayHerName has become even more prominent.

Illinois State's Attorney for Cook County, Anita Alvarez was the target of Assata's Daughters and other activist organizations in Chicago during her re-election campaign because it took her a year to respond officially to the shooting death of Laquan MacDonald, who was shot and killed by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke.[135][136] Protesters also cited the 2012 shooting death of Rekia Boyd, a 22-year-old Black woman, at the hands of Chicago police officer Dante Servin, with a sign that read "Justice for Rekia, No votes for Anita."[137] Alvarez had been the State's Attorney at the time and she charged Servin with involuntary manslaughter, a charge of which he was acquitted in 2015.[138]

During Alvarez's re-election bid, Assata's Daughters hung 16 banners around Chicago, to correspond to the number of bullets fired into MacDonald, with slogans such as "#ByeAnita", "#AdiosAnita 16 shots and a cover up", and "Blood on the Ballot".[137]

A protester holds a handmade sign that reads, #MuteRKelly.

The related campaign, #MuteRKelly was founded by Kenyette Barnes and Oronike Odeleye three months before Tarana Burke's "Me Too" message began to proliferate on Twitter in October 2017. Oronike stated, "Someone had to stand up for Black women, and if I wasn't willing to do my part — no matter how small — then I couldn't continue to complain."[139] While it took some time for #MuteRKelly to resonate with the public, on January 3, 2019, Lifetime Network aired a 6-part series titled, "Surviving R. Kelly", produced by filmmaker and music critic, dream hampton, together with Joel Karsberg, Jesse Daniels and Tamra Simmons. The first season was a critical success[140][141] and the premiere episode was Lifetime's highest-rated program in more than two years, with 1.9 million total viewers.[142] Rotten Tomatoes reads, "By unearthing previously suppressed histories, Surviving R. Kelly exposes the dangers of enabling predatory behavior and gives necessary voice to its survivors."[140]

On March 6, 2019, television program CBS This Morning broadcast an interview with Kelly by Gayle King, in which Kelly insisted on his innocence and blamed social media for the allegations.[143] Attracting media attention was an emotional outburst by Kelly during the interview where he stood up, pounded his chest, and yelled.[144]

As of July 12, 2019, R. Kelly has been accused of child pornography, kidnapping and forced labor.[145] He is currently incarcerated at Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago.[146]