The first African-American woman Senator, Carol Moseley-Braun was also only the second Black Senator since the
Reconstruction Era.1
“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.”2
During her single term in
office, Senator Moseley-Braun advocated for civil rights
issues and for legislation on crime, education, and families.
Carol Moseley was born in Chicago, Illinois, on
August 16, 1947. Her parents, Joseph Moseley, a
policeman, and her mother, Edna (Davie) Moseley, a
medical technician, divorced in 1963. The oldest of the
four Moseley children in a middle-class family, Carol
graduated from Parker High School in Chicago and earned
a BA in political science from the University of Illinois in
1969.3
Possessing an early interest in politics, she worked
on the campaign of Harold Washington—an Illinois state
representative, a U.S. Representative, and the first African-American mayor of Chicago—and the campaign of Illinois
state senator Richard Newhouse.4
In 1972 Carol Moseley
graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law. In
Chicago she met and later married Michael Braun. Moseley-Braun hyphenated her maiden and married names. The
couple raised a son, Matthew, but their marriage ended in
divorce in 1986. 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, a position she held for a decade. After an
unsuccessful bid for Illinois lieutenant governor in 1986,
she was elected the Cook County, Illinois, recorder of deeds
in 1988, becoming the first African American to hold an
executive position in Cook County.5
Not satisfied with her position as recorder of deeds, and
believing politicians were out of touch with the average
American, Moseley-Braun contemplated running for
Congress. Her resolve to seek national office strengthened
after she witnessed Senators dismissively question Anita
Hill during Clarence Thomas’s controversial confirmation
hearing for the Supreme Court in 1991. “The Senate
absolutely needed a healthy dose of democracy,” she
observed. “It wasn’t enough to have millionaire white
males over the age of 50 representing all the people in the
country.”6
Officially entering the race for the Senate in
November 1991, Moseley-Braun focused her Democratic
primary campaign on two-term incumbent Alan John Dixon’s support of Clarence Thomas’s appointment and
the need for diversity in the Senate. Despite organizational
problems and paltry fundraising, Moseley-Braun stunned
the experts, defeating her two opponents, Dixon and
Alfred Hofeld, an affluent Chicago lawyer, by capturing
38 percent of the primary vote.7
“This democracy is alive
and well, and ordinary people can have a voice with no
money,” Moseley-Braun remarked shortly afterward.8
In the
general election, she faced Republican candidate Richard
Williamson, a lawyer and a former official in the Ronald
Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.9
Focusing
on a message of change and diversity encapsulated by
slogans such as, “We don’t need another arrogant rich
guy in the Senate,” Moseley-Braun ultimately defeated
Williamson with 53 percent of the vote.10 In the “Year
of the Woman,” Carol Moseley-Braun became a national
symbol of change, reform, and equality. Soon after
her election to the Senate, she commented, “my job is
emphatically not to be a celebrity or a full time symbol.
Symbols will not create jobs and economic growth. 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.”11
In the Senate, Moseley-Braun became the first woman
to serve on the powerful Finance Committee when a top-ranking Democrat, Thomas Andrew Daschle of South
Dakota, gave up his seat to create a spot for her. Also,
Moseley-Braun and Senator Dianne Feinstein of California
became just the second and third women ever to serve on
the prestigious Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition,
Moseley-Braun served on the Senate Banking, Housing,
and Urban Affairs Committee and on the Small Business
Committee. In 1993, the Illinois Senator made headlines
when she convinced the Senate Judiciary Committee not
to renew 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, and despite the Judiciary Committee’s disapproval,
the Senate was poised to pass a resolution sponsored by
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina that included a
provision to authorize the extension of the federal patent.
Moseley-Braun threatened to filibuster the legislation “until
this room freezes over.” She also made an impassioned and
eloquent plea to her colleagues about the symbolism of the
Confederate flag, declaring, “It has no place in our modern
times, place in this body, place in our society.”12 Swayed by
Moseley-Braun’s argument, the Senate rejected the UDC’s
application to renew its patent.13
Moseley-Braun sparred with Senator Helms once again
while managing her first bill on the Senate Floor. As a
cosponsor of a measure providing federal funding for
the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission—an
organization 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
a civil rights march with King in the 1960s to win support
for the legislation.14 The Senate eventually approved the bill.
Among Moseley-Braun’s other triumphs were her prominent
roles in the passage of the Child Support Orders Act, the
1994 William J. (Bill) Clinton administration crime bill, the
Multiethnic Placement Act, and the Improving America’s
Schools Act.15
During her term in the Senate, Moseley-Braun addressed
an array of issues affecting women and African Americans.
She helped create 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.”16 She also sponsored the creation of the
Sacagawea coin to recognize women of color and a National
Park Service initiative to fund historic preservation of the
Underground Railroad.17 A consistent supporter of equal
opportunity and affirmative action, Moseley-Braun also
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.18
Despite the high expectations following Moseley-Braun’s upset victory in 1992, her term in the Senate was
marked by controversy. Moseley-Braun drew criticism
for alleged campaign finance violations, but such charges
were later dismissed when a five-year investigation by the
Federal Election Commission turned up only a minor
discrepancy of $311.19 In 1996 the Congressional Black
Caucus and human rights organizations chastised Moseley-Braun for taking a private trip to Nigeria to attend the
funeral of General Sani Abacha’s son despite objections
by the State Department. Previously an outspoken
critic of human rights violations in the African nation,
Moseley-Braun reversed her position and defended the
Nigerian government.20
Closely scrutinized, Moseley-Braun faced a difficult
challenge in her 1998 bid for re-election to the Senate
against Republican Peter G. Fitzgerald, an Illinois state
senator.21 Capturing just 47 percent of the vote, Moseley-Braun lost to her opponent, who spent nearly $12 million
of his own money.22 President Clinton appointed Moseley-Braun the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand; she served
from 1999 until 2001. Attempting to revive her political
career, Moseley-Braun entered the race for the Democratic
nomination for President in 2000, but she was unsuccessful.
It was the second time an African-American woman had
sought the nomination (Representative Shirley Chisholm of
New York became the first in 1972). Since 2001 Moseley-Braun has taught political science at Morris Brown College
(Atlanta) and DePaul University (Chicago) and managed
a business consulting company in Chicago.23 In 2004
Moseley-Braun made another unsuccessful bid for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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