Record Number of Black Women Running for Congress in 2020

More Black women will likely be joining these Black Congresswomen after November.

• 122 Black, or multi-racial Black women have run in this year's congressional elections, in America.
• At the end of the primary season, nearly 60 Black women remain in the running.
• According to the Center of Women and Politics and Higher Heights for America, Black women make up nearly 8% of the U.S. population, but just 4.3% of Congress.
• Black women voters also had the highest participation rate of any group in both the 2012 and 2008 elections.

Joyce Elliott, an Arkansas state senator who is seeking a U.S. congressional seat in November, was the second Black student to attend her local public high school; the first was her older sister. If elected in November, she will be the first Black lawmaker in Congress from Arkansas, ever.

On the campaign trail in June, Elliott attended a demonstration against racism in White County, which is more than 90% white, and spoke to attendees in the shadow of a Confederate monument.

The November election is a “chance to change our history,” she told Reuters afterward. “I really decided I needed to run because I could see a pathway to winning.”

As the United States grapples with a deadly coronavirus pandemic that has disproportionately sickened and killed Black Americans and recent upheaval over police brutality, a record number of Black women are running for Congress.

Elliott is one of at least 122 Black or multi-racial Black women who filed to run for congressional seats in this year’s election.

Read the rest of the story here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/black-women-racial-diversity-cong...