Sunday Focus: Elected Black Women

     An exhaustive new report from Rutgers University studies the growth---in some places---of black women elected to Federal, State, and Mayoral offices.
     There are ten states without any black female legislators. The report ranks Alabama fifth in the country, with a dozen black female legislators---8.57% of the House and Senate. (Although the black female population of the state is 14.63%) 
     The Rutgers report shows that at least half of the female legislators in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are black. Also: in Alabama, 85.7% of all of the Democratic women in the legislature are black.
     Twenty years ago there were 168 black women serving in state legislatures at the same time. In 2015 that number is up to 260. Almost all of the black women who have served in legislatures in the past 20 years have been Democrats. 2.4% were Republicans.

   


  By the way, the first black woman elected to the Alabama Legislature was Louphenia Thomas, elected to the house in a special election in Jefferson County in 1976...she served just two years. Thomas died in 2001. 

[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]