U.S. Senate, for the first time, will have two Black women among its members

Election Day 2024 was historical for the fact that a woman of minority race ran for president of the United States, but history was also made in the U.S. Senate on Nov. 5.

After more than 200 years, two Black women will be serving at the same time, one from Delaware and one from Maryland.

Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester will take a seat vacated by Democratic Sen. Tom Carper in Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks, a county executive with Prince George’s County, beat former Gov. Larry Hogan for a seat in Maryland.

Rochester, who grew up in and lives in Wilmington, is also the first woman to represent Delaware in the Senate. She previously represented Delaware in the House of Representatives, served as Assistant Whip for House Leadership and sits on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. She is a former implementer at the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services. She also serves as a member of the Bipartisan Heroin Task Force.

Co-Chair of the New Democrat Coalition’s Future of Work Task Force and founder of the Congressional Future of Work Caucus, Rochester is former Secretary of Labor and State Personnel Director. As a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, she helped craft the 2018 Farm Bill.

Alsobrooks, an attorney born and raised in Prince George’s County, is the first Black woman to represent Maryland in the Senate. As Prince George’s County Executive from 2018 to 2024, she was the first woman to hold the position and the first Black woman to serve as a county executive in Maryland. She previously served two terms as the county’s state’s attorney. Alsobrooks takes the Senate seat left by the retirement of Sen. Ben Cardin.

The two ladies began referring to each other as “sister senator” on social media after Election Day and will be America‘s fourth and fifth Black women to serve in the U.S. Senate after they are sworn in on January 3, 2025. Carol Moseley Braun was the first Black woman elected to the Senate in 1992 and served Illinois until 1999. Now-Vice President Kamala Harris won a seat in California in 2016 and served until 2021. In 2023, Sen. Laphonza Butler was appointed to complete Sen. Dianne Feinstein‘s term which ends in January.

According to the U.S. Senate‘s website, 60 women have served on the Senate, and 24 currently serve as of 2024.

Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan is the first Black woman to serve the Commonwealth in Congress. The first Black woman elected to Congress was Shirley Chisholm, who was elected to serve New York in 1968. She was a Democrat and she died in 2005.

Rochester, 62, and Alsobrooks, 53, were surrogates on the Harris campaign. They have long considered Harris a mentor and friend.

“Now there are some who think our politics are too broken for bright hope. But if you want to see hope, just look. Bright hope is record numbers of Black and brown entrepreneurs starting businesses,” Rochester said at the Democratic National Convention in August 2024. “Bright hope is four words: Madam President Kamala Harris.”

In running for the U.S. Senate, neither Rochester nor Alsobrooks intended to make history, but they are motived by the milestone.

“So many people created the opportunities for us to be in the space that we are in … Coretta Scott King said that freedom is never really won; we have to fight it and win it in every generation,” Alsobrooks told ELLE. She added that it will be her and Rochester’s “responsibility to ensure that we make the kind of impact that allows people from similar backgrounds to have the same opportunity. The housekeepers like [my grandmother] Sarah, the car salesmen like my father, the receptionists like my mother, those people should be able to see themselves in each of us.”

Rochester and Alsobrooks will have each other as “built-in allies.”

“We’re going to be able to do some really big and bold work. The history-making part is good, but the impact is what we’re all going for, to make a difference in people’s lives. The ability to go to the Senate and be one of 100 — but also as two of only five [Black women senators] in the history of this country,” Rochester said.