Carol Moseley Braun
*Carol Moseley Braun was born on this date in 1947. She is a Black diplomat, politician, and lawyer.
Carol Elizabeth Moseley was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Joseph J. Moseley, was a Chicago police officer and jail guard; her mother, Edna A. (Davie), was a medical technician in a hospital. Both her parents were Catholic. The family lived in a segregated middle-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Her parents divorced when she was in her teens, and she lived with her grandmother.
She attended Ruggles elementary school and Parker High School (now the site of Paul Robeson High School). Moseley began her undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign but dropped out.
She then majored in political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, graduating in 1969. Moseley earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1972. In 1973, Moseley married Michael Braun, whom she had met in law school. The couple had one son, Matthew, in 1977. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1986. Moseley Braun was a prosecutor in Chicago's United States Attorney's office from 1973 to 1977. An Assistant United States Attorney, she worked primarily in the civil and appellate law areas. Her housing, health policy, and environmental law work won her the Attorney General's Special Achievement Award.
She represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She is the first Black female U.S. Senator in history, the first Black 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. Before her Senate tenure, Moseley Braun was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1979 to 1988 and served as recorder of deeds of Cook County from 1988 to 1992. 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 before the Iowa caucuses. In November 2010, following an announcement by Richard M. Daley that he would not seek re-election, Moseley Braun began a campaign for Mayor of Chicago. She placed fourth in a field of six candidates, losing the February 2011 election to Rahm Emanuel.
