Moseley-Braun, Carol, 1947-

<p>Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun (born August 16, 1947), is an American diplomat, politician and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. Prior to her Senate tenure, Moseley Braun was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1979 to 1988 and served as Cook County Recorder of Deeds from 1988 to 1992. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992 after defeating Senator Alan Dixon in a Democratic primary. Moseley Braun served one term in the Senate and was defeated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald in 1998.</p>

<p>Following her Senate tenure, Moseley Braun served as the United States Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa from 1999 to 2001. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 U.S. presidential election; she withdrew from the race prior to the Iowa caucuses. In November 2010, Moseley Braun began a campaign for Mayor of Chicago to replace retiring incumbent Richard M. Daley. She placed fourth in a field of six candidates, losing the February 2011 election to Rahm Emanuel.</p>

<p>Moseley Braun was the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first African-American U.S. Senator from the Democratic Party, the first woman to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator in an election, and the first female U.S. Senator from Illinois.</p>

<p>Carol Moseley-Braun was born in Chicago to Edna, a medical technician, and Joseph Moseley, a Chicago police officer, in 1947. Her parents emphasized the importance of education and the necessity of hard work throughout Carol's childhood and she learned these lessons well. A self-motivated individual even as a youth, Carol Moseley-Braun worked in the post office and in grocery stores in order to finance her own education after high school. Her diligence earned her a law degree from the University of Chicago, which the ambitious young woman received with honors.</p>

<p>Carol Moseley-Braun worked for three years as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Her success as a prosecutor earned her the United States Attorney General's Special Achievement Award. Then, in 1978, Moseley-Braun was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, where she immediately earned a reputation as an uncompromising stateswoman. Her legislative legacy has been her ability to build coalitions comprised of people of all races who are committed to the same principles of efficient government. During her first election for State Representative, Carol Moseley-Braun pledged to make education her top priority. She was the chief sponsor of the 1985 Urban School Improvement Act, which created parents' councils at every school in Chicago. Other education legislation sponsored by Moseley-Braun included a 1980 bill that provided higher salaries for teachers and professors. After only two terms in the House, Carol Moseley-Braun was selected to become the first woman and the first African American in Illinois history to serve as Assistant Majority Leader.</p>

<p>As the late Mayor Harold Washington's legislative floor leader, Carol Moseley-Braun was the chief sponsor of bills to reform education and to ban discrimination in housing and private clubs. For each of her ten years in the legislature, Carol Moseley-Braun received the "Best Legislator" award given by the Independent Voters of Illinois - Independent Precinct Organization.</p>

MOSELEY BRAUN, Carol, a Senator from Illinois; born in Chicago, Ill., August 16, 1947; educated in Chicago public schools; graduated, University of Illinois 1969; graduated, University of Chicago School of Law 1972; admitted to the Illinois bar in Chicago 1973; prosecutor, office of the United States Attorney, Chicago 1973-1977; member and assistant majority leader, Illinois house of representatives 1978-1988; recorder of deeds, Cook County, Ill., 1988-1992; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1992, and served from January 3, 1993, to January 3, 1999; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1998; ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, December 15, 1999-2001; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004; entrepreneur; is a resident of Chicago, Ill., Atlanta, Ga., and Union Springs, Ala.

<p>The first African-American woman Senator, Carol Moseley-Braun was also only the second Black Senator since the Reconstruction Era. “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 in office, Senator Moseley-Braun advocated for civil rights issues and for legislation on crime, education, and families.</p>

<p>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. 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. 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.</p>

<p>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.” 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. “This democracy is alive and well, and ordinary people can have a voice with no money,” Moseley-Braun remarked shortly afterward. 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. 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. 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.”</p>