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Carol Moseley Braun

Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun[1] (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 J. Dixon in a Democratic primary. Moseley Braun served one term in the Senate and was defeated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald in 1998.

Carol Moseley Braun

Bill Clinton
George W. Bush

Joe Beeman

Charles Swindells

Robert Mann

24th district (1979-1983)
25th district (1983-1988)

Carol Elizabeth Moseley

(1947-08-16) August 16, 1947
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Michael Braun
(m. 1973; div. 1986)

1

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 2011 election to Rahm Emanuel.


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 the primaries for the nomination by a major party, and the first female U.S. Senator from Illinois.


In January 2023, she was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve a member and chair of the board of directors for the United States African Development Foundation. She began her tenure in April 2024.

Early life, education, family, and early career[edit]

Carol Elizabeth Moseley was born in Chicago. She attended public and parochial schools. She attended Ruggles School for elementary school, and she attended Parker High School (now the site of Paul Robeson High School) in Chicago.[2][3] Her father, Joseph J. Moseley, was a Chicago police officer and jail guard and her mother, Edna A. (Davie), was a medical technician in a hospital. Both her parents were Catholic, and Moseley was raised in the faith.[4][5]


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.[6]


Moseley began her undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, but dropped out after four months.[3] She then majored in political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago,[7] graduating in 1969. Moseley earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1972.[8]


In 1973, Moseley married Michael Braun, whom she had met in law school.[4] The couple had one son, Matthew, in 1977. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1986.[9]


Moseley Braun worked as a prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office in Chicago from 1973 to 1977. As an assistant United States Attorney, she worked primarily in the civil and appellate law areas. Her work in housing, health policy, and environmental law won her the Attorney General's Special Achievement Award.[10] She stopped working as a prosecutor after her son's 1977, and briefly became a homemaker before being persuaded to run for the Illinois state legislature.[8]

Early political career[edit]

Moseley Braun was first elected to public office in 1978, when she was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. She became the first African-American woman to serve as assistant majority leader in that body.[11] As a state representative, she became recognized as a champion for liberal social causes.[9] As early as 1984, she proposed a moratorium on the application of the death penalty in Illinois. In what became a landmark reapportionment case, Crosby v. State Board of Elections, she successfully sued her own party and the state of Illinois on behalf of African-American and Hispanic citizens. When she left the state legislature, her colleagues recognized her in a resolution as "the conscience of the House."[12] In 1988, she was elected Cook County Recorder of Deeds, a post she held for four years.[13][11]

Later political activities[edit]

In the 2016 Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Maryland, Moseley Braun endorsed Donna Edwards.[74][75] In the 2019 Chicago mayoral election runoff, Moseley Braun endorsed Toni Preckwinkle.[76] In the 2023 Chicago mayoral election runoff, Moseley Braun endorsed Brandon Johnson.[77]


In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Moseley Braun endorsed Joe Biden.[78] During the November 2019 Democratic presidential debate, Biden mentioned her endorsement, misspeaking and mistakenly referring to her as "the only African-American woman who's ever been elected to the United States Senate", only to be quickly corrected by his opponents, including Kamala Harris, who herself happened to be the second (and only other) African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. This gaffe of Biden's attracted significant media attention.[79][80][81] Moseley Braun traveled to various states to campaign on Biden's behalf.[82] At the 2020 Democratic National Convention, she was responsible for announcing Illinois' votes in the roll call.[83][84] After Biden's victory in the general election (with Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running mate), Moseley Braun made it publicly known that she was interested in being his Secretary of the Interior. She also expressed interest in holding some other role in his administration.[83][85] Biden opted to nominate Deb Haaland for Secretary of the Interior.[86]

Work outside government and politics[edit]

In 2005, Moseley Braun founded an organic products company known as Good Food Organics. Good Food Organics was the parent company of Ambassador Organics.[11] As of 2019, the company was defunct.[17]


Moseley Braun became a visiting professor of political science at Northwestern University in November 2016.[11]


Trailblazer: Perseverance in Life and Politics, a memoir authored by Moseley Braun, is scheduled to be published on January 21, 2026 by Hanover Square Press.[92]

Personal life[edit]

In September 1998, Lauryn Kaye Valentine applied for permission to change her name to Carol Moseley Braun. Valentine cited the former senator as her hero and promised not to "dishonor [the] name". The change was made official. That December, however, Valentine put her name forward as a candidate for alderman of Chicago's 37th Ward.[93] Before the election, a Circuit Court judge rescinded the name change, forcing Valentine to revert to her original name.[94] Valentine was later ruled ineligible to run, as she was not a registered voter at the time because of her name changes.[95]


In April 2007, Braun suffered a broken wrist when a mugger emerged from bushes near her front door to steal her purse. Braun resisted and fell during the struggle, fracturing her left wrist. The mugger was chased off by a University of Chicago student while his girlfriend called 911. Braun was later treated at a hospital and released.[96] A man was later charged with the crime and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on July 11, 2008.[97]


Braun's financial problems made headlines in October 2012 when it was revealed that her home was in foreclosure and that she had not made any mortgage payments for over a year. Before she was evicted, she sold her house for approximately $200,000 less than the amount she still owed on her mortgage loan.[98]

(co-signed with 69 other former U.S. senators) –published by The Washington Post on February 25, 2020

70 Former U.S. senators: The Senate is Failing to Perform its Constitutional Duties

–published by the Chicago Tribune on February 23, 2024

Democrats Aren’t Just Celebrating Black History. We’re Making It.

List of African-American United States senators

Women in the United States Senate

Graham, Judith, ed. (1994). "Moseley-Braun, Carol". Current biography yearbook 1994. New York: . pp. 378–382. OCLC 31866481.

H. W. Wilson Company

Perry, Margaret (1996). . In Smith, Jessie Carney (ed.). Notable Black American women: book II. Detroit: Gale Research. pp. 482–484. ISBN 0-8103-4749-0.

"Carol E. Moseley-Braun"

Rosen, Issac; Zerbonia, Ralph G. (2004). "Carol Moseley Braun". In Henderson, Ashyia N. (ed.). Contemporary Black biography: profiles from the international Black community. Volume 42. Farmington Hills: . pp. 13–17. ISBN 0-7876-6730-7.

Thomson Gale

Bond, Julian (March 16, 2005). . UVA NewsMakers. Charlottesville: University of Virginia. Archived from the original on June 8, 2011. (video 58:25)

"Carol Moseley Braun – A conversation with Julian Bond"

Oral History Interviews, Senate Historical Office, Washington, D.C., 1999

"Carol Moseley Braun: U.S. Senator, 1993–1999,"

at the Federal Election Commission

Financial information (federal office)

on C-SPAN

Appearances

Ambassador to NZ Biography