It may surprise you that there are currently no Black women in the United States Senate. But Representative Barbara Lee is running to change that.
Lee officially announced she was running for California Senator Diane Feinstein’s senate seat last month. If she wins, Lee would be the third Black woman Senator and the only sitting Black woman in the Senate.
Lee sat down with The Root to discuss her run and why she thinks the Senate needs her voice.
“The Senate needs my perspective,” says Lee. “Someone who has been a champion of progressive values…and in fact been able to turn a lot of my lived experiences as a woman as an African American woman, a woman of color, into public policy.”
Only two Black women have ever served in the Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senator Carol Moseley. Lee says that Black women’s experiences intersect deeply with the core issues in our country, but for far too long, we’ve been excluded from the halls of power. Read more
