Senate Nears Historic First of Two Black Women Serving Together

Out of more than 2,000 senators in history, just three have been Black women. The 119th Congress that convenes next January may be the first to have two serving in the Senate at the same time.

“We deserve to be in these places and these spaces,” four-term Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), the first Black person and woman to represent her state in Congress, said Friday at a panel discussion in Washington during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference.

Blunt Rochester, who’s well-positioned to win a Senate seat on Nov. 5, was flanked by Maryland Democrat Angela Alsobrooks, the Prince George’s County Executive who’s in a more competitive Senate race, and Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), the chamber’s only Black woman and an interim appointee who’s leaving by the end of the year.

Alsobrooks is up against former two-term Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who’s won elections in Democratic-friendly Maryland.

“Maryland now is center stage — one of the states that we know will help us decide the majority in the Senate,” Alsobrooks said. “When we elect Kamala Harris to be our president, she’s going to need to have the majority in the Senate so that she can get her agenda across.”

Blunt Rochester said she wanted to work with Alsobrooks, “my soon-to-be hopefully sister senator,” on enshrining abortion rights in federal law.

Both Blunt Rochester and Alsobrook stand to benefit in the Nov. 5 election from sharing a ballot with Vice President Harris, who’s favored to carry their states by double-digit margins. Harris was the second Black woman to serve in the Senate, following Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) from 1993 to 1999.

“I’m so excited that we are about to move beyond the acceptance of having just one. We’re gonna be bold enough to send two to the United States Senate,” Butler said. “And most important, I’m excited for the doors that they are going to kick open when we are no longer counting how many.”