Carol Moseley-Braun
(b. 1947)

Carol Moseley-Braun, a woman of achievement, showed an affinity for advocacy from her earliest years. Born on August 14, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois, the oldest of four children and daughter of a police officer, Carol attended public schools in Chicago. Because she felt that segregation laws were wrong, at the age of nine, she refused to drink water from a fountain marked for colored. As a teenager, she attempted to enjoy a day at Rainbow Beach, a recreation area then earmarked for whites only. Often she would go to whites only restaurants refusing to leave until she was served. Thus, it is no surprise that her fight for justice would continue through the legal and political processes.

Carol Moseley-Braun attended the University of Illinois and then studied law at the University of Chicago. In her first position as a U.S. prosecutor, her outstanding achievements were recognized with receipt of the U.S. Attorney General's Special Achievement Award. She was the first African-American to hold an executive office as Recorder of Deeds for the Cook County Government. She continued to make history as an Illinois State Representative becoming the first woman and African-American assistant majority leader. While there, she introduced the bill that prohibited the State of Illinois from investing funds in South Africa until apartheid was abolished.

In 1992, with a dynamic grass roots campaign, she defeated incumbent Senator Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary and then Republican Richard Williamson, to become the first African-American women elected to the Senate of the United States. Only three other African-Americans had ever become Senator. She was the first woman appointed to the Finance Committee and holds membership on the Housing and Urban Affairs, the Judiciary, the Export Expansion and Agricultural Development, and the Small Business Committees.

Senator Carol Moseley-Braun co-sponsored the Community Development Financial Institutions Act which facilitates access to capital for neglected neighborhoods. She also sponsored legislation which authorized the National Park Service to commemorate thirty-eight historic sites along the Illinois Underground Railroad. At the bill's signing, Senator Moseley-Braun stated, "The Underground Railroad bridged the divides of race, religion, sectional differences, and nationality, spanned state lines and international borders, and joined the American ideals of liberty and freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the extraordinary actions of ordinary men and women working in common purpose to free a people."