Elected in 1992, Carol Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman Senator, and only the second Black
Senator since Reconstruction. “I cannot escape the fact
that I come to the Senate as a symbol of hope and change,”
Moseley Braun said shortly after being sworn in to office in
1993. “Nor would I want to, because my presence in and of
itself will change the U.S. Senate.” During her single term
on Capitol Hill, Senator Moseley Braun worked to improve
civil rights in America and sought legislation on crime,
education, and families.1
Carol Moseley Braun was born Carol Moseley in
Chicago, Illinois, on August 16, 1947. Her father, Joseph
Moseley, a policeman, and her mother, Edna Moseley, a
medical technician, divorced when she was a teenager. The
oldest of four children in a middle-class family, Moseley
Braun graduated from Parker High School in Chicago
and earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the
University of Illinois in 1969. As a teenager, Moseley Braun
joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1966 open housing
march through the Chicago Lawn neighborhood on the
southwest side of the city. When White residents opposed
to neighborhood integration set cars on fire and violently
attacked the peaceful marchers with rocks and bottles, she
observed King’s steadfast commitment to nonviolent protest
and refrained from retaliation. By taking “the moral high
road,” Moseley Braun recalled, King demonstrated that
“we value each other’s humanity, that violence has no place
in that.” Her experience marching with King was formative
and shaped her approach to politics.2
Moseley Braun’s early interest in politics led her to
work on the campaigns of state senator Richard Newhouse
and state representative Harold Washington; Washington
would later serve as a U.S. Representative and as the first
African-American mayor of Chicago. In 1972, Moseley
Braun graduated from the University of Chicago School
of Law, where she founded the school’s Black law students’
association. In Chicago she met and later married Michael
Braun; they divorced in 1986. The couple raised a son,
Matthew. Moseley Braun worked as a prosecutor in the
office of the U.S. Attorney in Chicago from 1973 until
1977. In 1978, she won election to the Illinois state house
of representatives and served for a decade. In the state
house, she coordinated with Harold Washington’s powerful
mayoral administration on issues and policies important to
Chicago. After an unsuccessful bid for Illinois lieutenant
governor in 1986, Moseley Braun was elected the Cook
County, Illinois, recorder of deeds in 1988, becoming the
first African American to hold an executive position in
Cook County.3
Unsatisfied with her position as recorder of deeds—
and frustrated with national politicians she believed to
be out of touch with the average American—Moseley
Braun contemplated running for Congress. Following the
controversial confirmation hearing for Supreme Court
nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991, Moseley Braun set her
sights on the Senate, resolving to run when several Senators
dismissively questioned Anita Hill, Thomas’s former
employee who had accused him of sexual harassment.
The Senate, she observed, “absolutely needed a healthy
dose of democracy . . . it wasn’t enough to have millionaire
white males over the age of 50 representing all the people
in this country.”4
Moseley Braun officially entered the race for the Senate
in November 1991, challenging two-term Democratic
incumbent Alan John Dixon in the 1992 primary.
Moseley Braun focused her primary campaign on the need
for diversity in the Senate and Dixon’s vote to confirm
Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Moseley
Braun struggled to raise funding during the race, but on
Election Day she stunned the experts, defeating her two
opponents, Dixon and Alfred Hofeld, an affluent Chicago
lawyer, by capturing 38 percent of the primary vote. “This
democracy is alive and well, and ordinary people can have
a voice with no money,” Moseley Braun proclaimed. In the
general election, she faced Republican candidate Richard
Williamson, a lawyer and former official in the Ronald
Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, focusing
on a message of change and diversity expressed in slogans
such as, “We don’t need another arrogant rich guy in the
senate.” In November 1992, Moseley Braun defeated
Williamson with 53 percent of the vote. In the “Year of the
Woman,” during which a record-breaking number of female
candidates won election to Congress, Moseley Braun’s
election became a national symbol of change, reform, and
equality. But she was not satisfied with the status afforded
by her victory. “Symbols will not create jobs and economic
growth,” she declared. “They do not do the hard work of
solving the health care crisis. They will not save the children
of our cities from drugs and guns and murder.”5
In the Senate, Moseley Braun and Senator Dianne
Feinstein of California became just the second and
third women ever to serve on the influential Judiciary
Committee. Moseley Braun also served on the Banking,
Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee and on the Small
Business Committee. In the 104th Congress (1995–1997),
she became the first Democratic woman to serve on
the powerful Finance Committee when a top-ranking
Democrat, Thomas Andrew Daschle of South Dakota,
gave up his seat in exchange for her vote to elect him as
Democratic Leader. She also picked up a seat on the Special
Committee on Aging. As one of the Senate’s few female
Members at the time, Moseley Braun quickly developed
a camaraderie with the other women in the chamber,
including Barbara Ann Mikulski of Maryland as well as
Feinstein. “The women senators were all pretty much
facing the same things, whether they were Republican
or Democrat,” she recalled. “We were forced into
bipartisanship because we were such a minority.”6
In 1993, Moseley Braun waged a prolonged fight to
prevent the renewal of a design patent for the United
Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) because it contained
the Confederate flag. The patent had been routinely
renewed for nearly a century, but Moseley Braun used
her seat on the Judiciary Committee to strip the renewal
provision from pending legislation. When Senator Jesse
Helms of North Carolina responded by preparing an
amendment to approve the patent extension which he
planned to offer on the Senate Floor, Moseley Braun
threatened to filibuster the legislation “until this room
freezes over.” While discussing the symbolism of the
Confederate flag, she declared, “This is something that
has no place in our modern times. . . . It has no place in
the Senate. It has no place in our society.” Moseley Braun’s
impassioned plea launched a candid discussion on race
and the legacy of slavery on the Senate Floor. “We were
human chattel. We were property. We could be traded,
bought, and sold,” she reminded her colleagues, adding
that “on this issue there can be no consensus.” Swayed by
Moseley Braun’s argument, the Senate rejected the UDC’s
application to renew its patent.7
Moseley Braun sparred with Helms once again during
debate on a measure providing federal funding for the
Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission, which had
been established in 1984 to promote national recognition
of the holiday. Moseley Braun helped thwart a Helms
amendment to the legislation that would have replaced
government money with private donations. The Illinois
Senator invoked memories of her participation in the
1966 march with King in Chicago to win support for
the legislation. The Senate eventually approved the bill.
Moseley Braun also sought to commemorate earlier parts
of African-American history and sponsored a bill to fund
historic preservation of Underground Railroad sites within
the National Park Service; a companion House bill became
law in 1998.8
Moseley Braun held prominent roles in shaping and
passing major legislation spearheaded by party leaders
and the William J. Clinton administration. When the
Senate debated the 1994 crime bill, it approved Moseley
Braun’s amendment to allow adolescents as young as 13
to be charged as adults for certain violent crimes. The
Illinois Senator was also a major proponent of crime
prevention initiatives. She introduced a bill to establish
additional “midnight basketball” leagues, a crime diversion
program that hosted youth sports games between 10:00
p.m. and 2:00 a.m. The bill was incorporated into the
major education bill known as the Goals 2000: Educate
America Act. As Congress considered another education
reform bill known as the Improving America’s Schools Act
(IASA), Moseley Braun brought attention to the crumbling
physical infrastructure of the nation’s schools. She requested
a General Accounting Office study which revealed that
public schools faced a $112 billion repair backlog. Portions
of her bill—the Education Infrastructure Act of 1994—
were included in the IASA, and authorized grants for the
renovation and repair of school buildings.9
During her term in the Senate, Moseley Braun regularly
addressed issues affecting women. She introduced legislation
to assist divorced and widowed women, arguing, “Pension
laws were never written for women . . . no wonder the vast
majority of the elderly poor are women.” In 1994, the
President signed her bill requiring states to enforce the child
support laws of other states. Moseley Braun was a consistent
supporter of equal opportunity and affirmative action and
spoke out against sexual harassment. In 1995, she joined
five of her women colleagues in the Senate to call for public
hearings on alleged sexual misconduct by Senator Robert
William Packwood of Oregon.10
Moseley Braun faced a handful of controversies during
her Senate career. Initially accused of violating campaign
finance regulations during her 1992 race, the charges were
dismissed when a five-year investigation by the Federal
Election Commission turned up only a minor discrepancy
of $311. In 1996, the Congressional Black Caucus and
human rights organizations criticized Moseley Braun for
taking a private trip to Nigeria to attend the funeral of
General Sani Abacha’s son despite objections by the U.S.
State Department.11
Closely scrutinized and lacking strong financial support
from her party, Moseley Braun faced a difficult challenge
in her 1998 bid for re-election. In the November general
election, she came up short with 47 percent of the vote,
losing to Republican Peter G. Fitzgerald, an Illinois state
senator who spent nearly $12 million of his own money on
the campaign. After leaving the Senate, President Clinton
appointed Moseley Braun the U.S. Ambassador to New
Zealand and Samoa; she served from 1999 until 2001.
Moseley Braun later founded an organic food company,
taught college courses in political science, and managed
a business consulting company in Chicago. In 2004,
she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential
nomination, and in 2011, she waged a losing campaign
for mayor of Chicago.12
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